22/05/2025
The man who organised a display of white crosses in South Africa, an image of which was shown by Donald Trump on Wednesday, has said that the US president was wrong when he described it as a "burial site".
Rob Hoatson said the crosses were put up on the roadside in KwaZulu-Natal province as a memorial to a couple who were killed on their farm in 2020.
During a sometimes-tense meeting at the White House, Trump showed his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa, a video of the crosses to bolster his argument that white farmers were being targeted.
While acknowledging there was violence in his country, Ramaphosa rejected the idea that the Afrikaner minority were being systematically killed.
"These are burial sites… over 1,000 of white farmers and… those cars aren't driving, they're stopped there to pay respects to their family member who was killed," Trump said as the video was playing in the Oval Office.
Mr Hoatson, a 46-year-old farmer, said that while he had no issue with the video being used without his knowledge, Trump was known to "exaggerate" and he was happy to set the record straight about the striking image.
"It's not a burial site, but it was a memorial. It was not a permanent memorial that was erected. It was a temporary memorial," he said.
The US president had said the crosses were evidence of attacks on white farmers in South Africa.