Hillside of white crosses fuels misleading story about South Africa farm killings

Nearly 3,000 white crosses dot a hillside at the Witkruis Monument, marking white farmers killed over 30 years. But it tells only part of the story. The site has fueled a false narrative of racial targeting, despite studies showing farm attacks affect all races in South Africa.

The false narrative has also been spread by conservative commentators in the United States and elsewhere — and amplified by South African-born Elon Musk and U.S. President Donald Trump.

Last month, Trump escalated the rhetoric, using the term “genocide” to describe violence against white farmers.

The South African government and experts who have studied farm killings have publicly denounced the misinformation spread by Trump and others.

Even the caretaker of Witkruis says the monument — which makes no reference to the hundreds of Black South African farmers and farmworkers who have been killed — does not tell the complete story.

"It's across the board, there are black farmers that's also attacked, but it's not as much as the white farmers that is attacked, and it's not as brutal. Normally, the workers are very affected because now they lose their income, and some of them are also held and tortured a bit before they go into the house. They get information out of them of the house before they attack the farmer in the house." Kobus de Lange said.

The killings of farmers and farmworkers, regardless of race, are a tiny percentage of the country's high level of crime, and they typically occur during armed robberies, according to available statistics and two studies carried out over the last 25 years.

Yet because wealthier white people own 72% of South Africa's privately owned farms, according to census data, they are disproportionately affected by these often brutal crimes.

Black people own just 4% of the country’s privately owned farmland, and the rest is owned by people who are mixed race or of Indian heritage.

Misinformation about farm killings has been fueled by right-wing political groups in South Africa and others outside the country, said Gareth Newman, a crime expert at the Institute for Security Studies think tank in Pretoria.

Some of the fringe South African groups, which hold no official power, boycotted the country’s first democratic elections in 1994, when South Africa's apartheid system of white minority rule officially ended.

They have espoused a debunked theory of persecution — in a country where whites make up about 7% of the population — ever since.

“They held on to these beliefs as a way of maintaining social cohesion in their groups, making sure that they can obtain funding and support," Newman said. "And they were getting support from right-wing groups abroad because it fit their narrative."