South Africa’s high violence and land debates clash with Western media views

President Donald Trump’s recent interventions on South Africa have been met with outrage in the liberal media, and its ‘fact-checking’ machinery has been put into overdrive scrutinizing every misstatement or exaggeration of the president. Yet, on the essential issues it is Western audiences who are being misled by progressive journalists whose views are, in turn, dramatically out of step with ordinary South African opinion.

South Africa is a violent society. Since it became a democracy in 1994, over 
650,000 South Africans have been murdered. That is more than the number of intentional homicides across the Western world over the same period even 
though the population of the West approaches 1 billion people while that of 
South Africa is closer to 60 million. On a per-capita basis, that amounts to a 
murder rate of around 40 per 100,000 for South Africa, while the global rate is closer to six per 100,000.

TRUMP’S CRITICISM OF SOUTH AFRICA’S VIOLENT CRIME CRISIS RECEIVES UNEXPECTED LOCAL SUPPORT

In that already violent climate, armed raids on commercial farmsteads have, over the past three decades, occurred at a multiple of the rate of similar attacks (essentially armed home invasion robberies) across the broader population. In addition, we calculate that roughly 20% of armed raids on farmsteads have resulted in murder as opposed to under 2% for similar attacks elsewhere. We also judge that the rate of attack on Black commercial producers is similar to that faced by their white compatriots.

Because Black and White South Africans alike live amidst such violence, 
murderous chant, ‘Kill the Boer, Kill the farmer,’ that Trump played at length during an Oval Office meeting with his South African counterpart last week, meets with strong popular disapproval locally. An April 2025 poll found that 80% of South Africans either disapprove of the chant, regard it as hate speech or believe that it should be banned. Western audiences may have been told that the chant is purely a metaphorical ‘anti-apartheid’ song, but it was, in fact, first taught to guerrillas during the armed struggle against White rule in both Rhodesia and South Africa, where farmers were regarded as legitimate military targets.

Western audiences are commonly informed that white South Africans, who make up just 7% of South Africa’s population, own “three-quarters” of agricultural land whereas black South Africans own just “4%”. These figures are misdirection. The bulk of White land holdings are in the arid western half of the country. These are areas where the terrain, climate, and population density is similar to that of Arizona, Nevada, or New Mexico. Across the high rainfall and densely populated east of the country approximately half of land by productive value is in black possession, although not ownership. The reason for this is that  the South African government continues to deny individual title across many Black communities preferring instead that land be held by the state or its proxies as a means of social and political control. Granting individual title would significantly shift land ownership patterns.

The belief that land ownership patterns, as they are, represent a national crisis might be popular in Western media but is not a view held by South Africans 
themselves. A recent poll found that top of the list of local concerns was job 
creation, mentioned by over 20% of respondents as South Africa’s single most important challenge. ‘Promoting access to land’ came far down the list, being 
mentioned by less than 5% of respondents.

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Finally, a recently enacted piece of expropriation legislation, which has drawn 
the particular attention of the Trump administration, is not a benign ‘eminent 
domain’ measure, as it is presented. It allows any organ of state to seize any 
kind of property – not just land – for below its market value. A recent poll found that this idea is opposed by just under 70% of South Africans and it is seen as a measure that will be abused by the notoriously corrupt political class.

At odds with elite opinion in the West the American administration’s concerns around violence, property rights, and economic progress in South Africa 
resonate closely with the concerns of South Africans themselves who are in the main a pragmatic and conservative people sharing in many of the democratic values held dear by Americans.