US President Donald Trump presented a screenshot from a Reuters video, falsely claiming it showed mass killings of white South Africans. The incident occurred during a meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa, where Trump held up a print-out of an article accompanied by the image, asserting, "These are all white farmers being buried."

The video, published by Reuters on February 3 and verified by their fact-check team, depicted humanitarian workers lifting body bags in Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC). The footage was taken after deadly battles with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.

The blog post Trump showed Ramaphosa was from American Thinker, a conservative online magazine, discussing conflict and racial tensions in SA and the DRC. While the post did not caption the image, it identified it as a "YouTube screengrab" with a link to a Reuters video report about the DRC.

Andrea Widburg, managing editor at American Thinker, acknowledged that Trump had "misidentified the image." However, she added that the post highlighted the increasing pressure on white South Africans, referring to Ramaphosa's government as "dysfunctional, race-obsessed Marxist government."

Reuters video journalist Djaffar Al Katanty, who filmed the mass burial after an M23 assault on Goma, expressed shock at Trump's use of his image. Al Katanty stated, "In view of all the world, President Trump used my image, used what I filmed in the DRC to try to convince President Ramaphosa that in his country, white people are being killed by black people."

Ramaphosa's visit to Washington aimed to mend ties with the US after Trump's criticism of SA's land laws, foreign policy, and alleged mistreatment of its white minority. Trump interrupted the televised meeting to play a video, falsely claiming it showed evidence of genocide against white farmers in SA, a conspiracy theory circulated in far-right circles.

The false claims made by Trump have stirred national conversation about race in South Africa in a way rarely seen since the end of apartheid.