WHAT EXPLAINS TRUMP'S FAKE-NEWS CAMPAIGN AGAINST SOUTH AFRICA?

African Stream dug into US President Donald Trump’s claim that South Africa is committing g*nocide against white farmers. 

During South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s 21 May meeting at the White House, Trump displayed some irrelevant, poorly sourced articles, and he played a video of white crosses set up by the roadside as evidence of the ‘white g*nocide.’ As African Stream Editor-in-Chief Ahmed Kaballo pointed out, who would bury their loved ones by the roadside, especially if they worried about a g*nocide?

So, was Trump misinformed or lying? We believe Trump is not ignorant, given the US president has access to a wealth of intelligence at his disposal. Trump is likely pushing a false narrative for political purposes.

Continued……Additionally, considering the number of mainstream Western news outlets pointing to the contrary, the disinformation is likely more strategic than accidental, designed to appeal to a specific ideological base like white supremacists.

Kaballo suggested it could have something to do with US right-wing political initiatives like Project 2025 and fears of a low white birth rate in the US, which would place whites in the minority by 2050. White supremacists use their population decline to justify exclusionary immigration policies and the expulsion of Black and Brown populations. Was that why Trump welcomed and granted refugee status to as many as 59 white settlers from South Africa?

Have a watch, and please let us know what you think.

Soundbite credit: @AP on X

Sources
https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/21/us/politics/trump-south-africa-president-white-farmers-video.html

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2022/3/10/south-africa-most-unequal-country-in-the-world-report

https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/white-genocide-south-africa-examining-trumps-oval-office/story?id=122052444

https://www.npr.org/2025/05/22/nx-s1-5406400/trump-confronts-south-africas-president-with-false-claims-of-white-genocide

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c9wg5pg1xp5o

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c977njnvq2do

https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-us-will-become-minority-white-in-2045-census-projects/

https://www.cnn.com/2024/05/01/politics/trump-immigration-what-matters

https://www.politico.com/news/2025/05/20/south-sudan-deportations-donald-trump-00360762

On 28 May 2014, poet, writer and activist Maya Angelou joined our ancestors. 

Angelou has been a critical figure in Black literature, pushing back on white-supremacist narratives about our people by celebrating us in all of her work. One thing Angelou (1928-2014) never failed to do was connect the global oppression of Africans in the diaspora to our people on the continent. 

In her words here, she reminds us of the significance of history as we shape our future. Angelou pointed out that detaching a people from their roots can cause a loss in direction. As a descendant of Africans kidnapped and forced into slavery in the Americas, Angelou asserted the importance of understanding where we come from.

Continued……Furthermore, her apt words make clear that not knowing our history can make us susceptible to the oppressor's narratives about us. For example, Africans who have internalised the oppressors' narrative that they are inferior to Europeans have attempted dangerous acts of erasure, such as skin bleaching, a trend in many parts of the continent and beyond.

Arguably, liberation begins with mental decolonisation, as it is from this that complete liberation can come to fruition. Understanding African history, where we have been and our current reality is crucial to knowing where we are heading.

Over a decade since her death, Maya Angelou's work continues to inspire our journey toward liberation. May she continue to rest in power.

Sources

https://www.nytimes.com/1972/04/16/archives/-for-years-we-hated-ourselves.html

K*LL THE BOER' IS NOT A CALL FOR MURDER

If you watched the cringe meeting between US President Donald Trump and his South African counterpart, Cyril Ramaphosa (@CyrilRamaphosa on X), we might have to forgive you for thinking that Pan-Africanist politician Julius Malema (@julius_s_malema on X, @julius.malema.sello on IG) is calling for g*nocide against white settlers in South Africa by singing the anti-apartheid song, ‘K*ll the Boer.’

Settlers of Dutch origin are also known as Boers.

During the 21 May meeting, Trump displayed videos of Malema at political events, claiming they were evidence of the opposition politician's alleged g*nocidal campaign. The US president went so far as to ask why Ramaphosa's government had not arrested Malema.

Trump's unfounded claims bypass the song’s context. It emerged with Black South Africans singing it on the streets in the 1980s and early 1990s in response to the apartheid regime’s violence unleashed against the Black majority. 

Continued….. The EFF leader has repeatedly said that his singing the song is neither hate speech nor inciting violence against white settlers but is merely a reminder to South Africans that the struggle against the economic and social exclusion of Black people is not yet over. Indeed, white settlers comprise only 7 per cent of the population but control most of the economy and own 72 per cent of private farmland. 

A 2022 South African Equality Court judgement ruled that the tune was simply a struggle song.

Further, a court recently dismissed the ‘white g*nocide’ claim in a separate case, calling it ‘not real’ and ‘clearly imagined.’ 

Of the murders that took place in South Africa between April 2024 and December 2024, only 0.035 per cent involved farmers, whose race the government had not distinguished in culling the information.

Video credits: @CNBC, @SABCnews and Judiciary of South Africa (@OCJ_RSA)

Sources

https://iol.co.za/news/politics/2025-03-27-just-in-constitutional-court-dismisses-afriforums-leave-to-appeal-kill-the-boer-kill-the-farmer-as-hate-speech

https://www.abs-cbn.com/news/world/2025/5/23/trump-s-treatment-of-south-africa-s-ramaphosa-irks-africans-1519

https://www.ndtv.com/world-news/about-kill-the-boer-chant-in-trumps-south-africa-white-genocide-video-8479105

https://thepost.co.za/news/politics/2025-03-27-da-teams-up-with-afriforum-to-urge-ramaphosa-to-condemn-kill-the-boer-song

https://groundup.org.za/article/judge-rules-kill-boer---kill-farmer-not-hate-speech

DAIRY FACTORIES OPENING ACROSS BURKINA FASO

In the heart of West Africa, a revolution is underway. Watch this powerful clip from Ghanaian YouTuber Wode Maya (@mrghanababy on IG), who recently visited Burkina Faso to document the country’s bold steps toward sovereignty, starting with cow's milk.

On 27 March, Burkina Faso inaugurated the first state-owned Faso Kosam-branded dairy factory in the capital of Ouagadougou. Then, on 18 May, Burkina Faso opened another Faso Kosam dairy factory in the city of Fada N'Gourma. The government also plans to open three more in the municipalities of Bobo Dioulasso, Koubri and Dori. The facilities would allow Burkina Faso to produce yoghurt, butter, cheese and powdered milk.

‘Only 2 per cent of national milk production is currently collected and processed, while almost 12 billion CFA francs [$20 million] are spent each year on importing dairy products,’ Alain Sawadogo, Faso Kosam’s director, told Libreinfo.

Continued……. The Faso Kosam project aligns with Burkina Faso's objective of food sovereignty and industrialisation, which President Ibrahim Traoré has promoted. On 20 February, Burkina Faso also inaugurated a flour mill called the Moulin Double Star in the town of Gampèla, on the outskirts of Ouagadougou. Furthermore, on 16 December 2024, Traoré inaugurated the second SOFATO tomato paste factory in the northern Yako department. The first factory launched on 30 November in Bobo Dioulasso, the country’s second-largest city, located in the southwest.

These new factories aim to transform how Burkinabé people consume food, reducing dependence on exports by relying on what farmers and workers can produce domestically. Former revolutionary leader of Burkina Faso, Thomas Sankara (1949-87), famously stated, ‘Where is imperialism? Look at your plates when you eat. The imported grains of rice, corn, and millet – that is imperialism. Let's not look any further.’ He championed the message: ‘Produce what you consume and consume what you produce.’

Today, Traoré seems to have not only taken Sankara's message to heart. He's implementing it.

Video credit: @mrghanababy (IG)

Sources

https://www.sig.gov.bf/actualites/agenda-du-gouvernement/details?tx_news_pi1%5Baction%5D=detail&tx_news_pi1%5Bcontroller%5D=News&tx_news_pi1%5Bnews%5D=2135&cHash=2d9dc240e49bce55497cec8ed3069537

https://libreinfo.net/laiterie-la-premiere-unite-de-faso-kosam-officiellement-inauguree/?amp=1

https://web.facebook.com/rtburkina/videos/la-société-faso-kosam-inaugure-la-2e-unité-de-production-de-lait-à-fada-ngourma/647655124936031/?_rdc=1&_rdr#

https://www.aib.media/burkina-le-president-traore-inaugure-une-usine-de-production-de-farine-de-ble-construite-a-15-milliards-par-un-particulier/

https://drive.google.com/file/d/14kpo0SUEEuBCV0TYLo8dJy3cJvqQKQeC/view?usp=sharing
(page 196 of PDF)

https://web.facebook.com/rtburkina/videos/consommons-ce-que-nous-produisons-produisons-ce-que-nous-consommons-prônait-le-p/1581728859366178/

OUT OF TOUCH RAMAPHOSA JOKES ABOUT HIS ENCOUNTER WITH TRUMP

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has attempted to make light of his infamous public humiliation by United States President Donald Trump during their recent meeting at the White House, which was dominated by discredited claims of genocide against South Africa’s white settlers.

Shortly before Ramaphosa’s speech at the 2025 Sustainable Infrastructure Development Symposium taking place in the city of Cape Town, the auditorium lights dimmed, prompting Ramaphosa to joke that it reminded him of the 21 May meeting with Donald Trump.

While Ramaphosa might have found the humiliating encounter hilarious, many Africans did not find the public humiliation of an African leader by a Western right-wing figure to be a laughing matter. This is because the disrespect that Trump showed towards Ramaphosa had less to do with the South African leader and more to do with contempt towards Africans as a collective.

Continued….. While Trump’s conduct reflected his views about Africans, which are well-documented, the meeting also perpetuated the racist notion of African leaders needing to have their decisions or conduct approved by Western leaders.
There is also nothing to laugh about an encounter where numerous falsehoods were spread about an African country and its people. Nobody in Europe was laughing when Trump pulled on a similar stunt on Ukraine’s Volodymyr Zelensky.

Is this all lost on Ramaphosa?

Another factor that makes it impossible to find anything hilarious about the Trump-Ramaphosa interaction is that the South African leader completely failed to take advantage of the exchange to effectively dispel the false and malicious ‘white genocide’ conspiracy theory that the likes of Trump have spread for years without any evidence.
Mr President, you are the only one laughing.

Credit: Newzroom Africa/X

The US House of Representatives passed a bill on 22 May that would impose a 3.5 per cent tax on immigrants' remittances abroad, down from the initial 5 per cent proposal. The 'One Big Beautiful Bill Act' that now moves to the US Senate for approval before needing US President Donald Trump's signature would affect part of the over $100 billion annually that streams from the global African diaspora back to their native countries.

Continued….. The UN says 2023 remittances amounted to more than twice foreign governments’ ‘development assistance’ and direct investment in Africa. Critics describe the proposed tax on remittances as an attack on the Global South, as they pay for school fees, medical expenses, housing and businesses on the continent. 

Republican lawmakers proposed the bill to allegedly curb illegal immigration, but all it appears to do is extract from already-taxed wages, illustrating how imperialist states control colonised people’s financial capacity.

For centuries, we have fought European colonisers who imposed taxes and exploited our lands and peoples. If this bill passes, our continent’s brain drain will be transformed into a cash drain.

This begs the question: Will the African countries defend their citizens abroad or keep quiet while the West remakes imperialism for the 21st century on the backs of their people abroad?

Sources

https://gfrid.org/diaspora-remittances-grow-to-record-sh671-billion-in-a-year

https://familyremittances.org/idfr-2024/events-activities/kenya

https://www.facebook.com/cgtnafrica/posts/the-kenya-national-bureau-of-statistics-reports-that-diaspora-remittances-rose-b/1142198744613175

https://peopledaily.digital/business/diaspora-remittances-jump-14pc-to-sh674-1b-in-2024

https://www.financialexpress.com/business/investing-abroad-internet-slams-us-bill-to-impose-5-tax-on-nri-remittances-says-this-is-new-form-of-stealing-3844915

https://www.kenyans.co.ke/news/112092-how-new-5-us-excise-tax-remittances-could-impact-money-sent-kenya

https://www.firstpost.com/explainers/trump-remittance-tax-impact-on-indians-us-diaspora-nri-13888902.html

https://www.nbcnews.com/news/latino/republicans-tax-remittances-immigrants-send-home-rcna206842

https://www.un.org/osaa/news/digital-remittances-africa

https://www.congress.gov/bill/119th-congress/house-bill/1/all-actions?overview=closed&q=%7B%22roll-call-vote%22%3A%22all%22%7D

PALESTINIAN CHILD TRYING TO ESCAPE ISRAEL’S SCHOOL BOMBING

This clip shows 5-year-old Ward Jalal Al-Shaikh Khalil looking for a way out of a classroom after Israel's 26 May airstrike on a Gaza City school where she and her family had sought shelter. Israel k*lled at least 35 people in the Fahmi al-Jerjawi School.

Before managing to escape, she watched her mother and four siblings - Abd al-Rahman (17), Muhammed (14), Maria (13) and Silwan (11) - burn to death, according to the Middle East Eye. Speaking to the news outlet, her uncle, Iyad Muhammed al-Sheikh Khalil, said, ‘She is devastated. Her situation is indescribable. I don't know how she will recover, or if she ever will.’

Israel's onslaught that began on 7 October 2023 has k*lled one or both parents of nearly 40,000 children.

Continued……It is the ‘largest orphan crisis in modern history,’ as Dr. Ola Awad, president of the Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics (PCBS), reported in a 5 April statement. Although Ward’s father also survived the bombing, he was left in a critical condition and rushed to the intensive care unit (ICU).

Francesca Albanese, the UN’s Special Rapporteur on the Occupied Palestinian Territories, said in March, ‘There are reasonable grounds to believe Israel is committing g*nocide.’ Yet, despite widespread reporting of Israel's atrocities and the world watching a plausible g*nocide unfold on our screens in real-time, Israel has not been held accountable.

Efforts to seek justice for Palestinians, such as South Africa’s g*nocide case at the International Court of Justice and International Criminal Court arrest warrants for Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his former defence minister, Yoav Galant, have been met with resistance. On 6 February, long-time Israel ally, the United States, placed sanctions on ICC ‘officials, employees, and agents, as well as their immediate family members.’ Washington also slashed funding to Pretoria, in a move many view as a retaliation for challenging Israel at the ICJ and standing with the Palestinian people against settler-colonialism.

Sources

https://www.middleeasteye.net/news/gaza-girl-devastated-after-family-killed-israeli-strike

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cz9yjj54v3xo

https://www.bbc.com/news/videos/c4g39x87q0go

https://www.aljazeera.com/video/newsfeed/2025/5/26/palestinian-child-filmed-trying-to-escape-fires-after-israeli-attack

https://www.pcbs.gov.ps/portals/_pcbs/PressRelease/Press_En_ChildDay05042025E.pdf

https://www.un.org/unispal/document/genocide-as-colonial-erasure-report-francesca-albanese-01oct24/

https://www.icc-cpi.int/news/situation-state-palestine-icc-pre-trial-chamber-i-rejects-state-israels-challenges

https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/imposing-sanctions-on-the-international-criminal-court/

'AIN’T I A WOMAN?’ AIN’T THE TRUTH

On 29 May 1851, at the Women’s Rights Convention in Akron, Ohio, Sojourner Truth - an unflinching abolitionist, formerly enslaved African woman and women's rights advocate - delivered one of the most revolutionary speeches in Black liberation history that’s famously known for the line, ‘Ain’t I a woman?’ 

Historians have since challenged whether Truth uttered those words. Nonetheless, many regard Sojourner's speech as a direct rebuke to both white supremacist patriarchy and the racist erasure of Black womanhood in early feminist movements.

Today, her legacy remains a rallying call, not only for Black women rights, but also for the liberation of all oppressed people across the globe. Here, we break down the controversy surrounding Sojourner’s speech.

Continued……Sources

https://www.foxnews.com/lifestyle/this-day-history-may-29-1851-sojourner-truth-delivers-aint-i-woman-speech

https://www.history.com/this-day-in-history/may-29/sojourner-truth-delivers-aint-i-a-woman-speech

https://www.thesojournertruthproject.com/compare-the-speeches

MAURICE BISHOP’S MESSAGE TO AFRICANS IN THE UNITED STATES

Today marks what would have been the 81st birthday of Maurice Rupert Bishop, a revolutionary from Grenada and one of the Caribbean’s fiercest champions of people-powered liberation.

Bishop, born on 29 May 1944, led the New JEWEL Movement (NJM) that ousted the corrupt US-backed dictatorship of Prime Minister Eric Gairy (1922-97) through a bloodless coup on 13 March 1979. The NJM aimed to advance Black liberation, education, land reform and socioeconomic development on the island.

With the rise in popularity of Pan-Africanism in Africa and the diaspora, it's the perfect time to revisit Bishop's 1983 speech in New York regarding the threat that Grenada's revolution represented to the US, as Grenada’s predominantly Black population could communicate in English to Black people in the US. 

Continued…….. NJM - New Joint Endeavor for Welfare, Education and Liberation - swiftly established the People's Revolutionary Government in 1979, ushering in an era of socialist programmes. Under Bishop's leadership, Grenada underwent a profound socioeconomic transformation marked by extensive reforms and initiatives to uplift the primarily poor population. By 1982, the following developments had occurred: A literacy campaign, the construction of new schools and the establishment of agricultural cooperatives that benefited unemployed youth in rural areas. Cuban aid provided expertise in education, healthcare, and infrastructure development, including in constructing a modern international airport to replace a hazardous airstrip. Unemployment plummeted from 49 per cent to 14 per cent within four years, while illiteracy dropped from 35 per cent to 5 per cent. Symbolising the shift in priorities, vibrant billboards promoting education adorned the island, a departure from those that had advertised cigarettes and alcohol.

Deputy Prime Minister Bernard Coard, now 80, orchestrated Bishop’s assassination on 19 October 1983.

Long live the spirit of Maurice Bishop!

Sources

https://jacobin.com/2019/09/grenada-revolution-maurice-bishop-reagan

https://www.zinnedproject.org/news/tdih/grenada-revolution/

https://nacla.org/remembering-grenada-revolution

https://www.jstor.org/stable/jj.490876

https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2023/oct/25/the-us-invaded-the-island-of-grenada-40-years-ago-the-legacy-of-revolution-lives-on

https://www.marxists.org/history/grenada/1973/manifesto.htm

THE AUDACITY OF GERMAN SETTLERS IN NAMIBIA

This viral clip features a German settler expressing astonishment at indigenous Namibians demanding settlers return occupied lands, demonstrating that the fight against colonialism continues more than a century later.

On 28 May, Namibia held its first G*nocide Remembrance Day to commemorate when German forces k*lled as many as 100,000 people of Herero and Nama ethnic origins between 1904 and 1908. This g*nocide is considered the first of the 20th century.

Similar to South Africa’s white-settler minority, who comprise less than 8 per cent of the population but own over 70 per cent of private farmland, Namibia’s 6 per cent of settler-colonialists own over 70 per cent of farmland, according to Namibia’s 2018 land statistics, and dominate businesses, according to former President Hage Geingob (1941-2024). 

Continued……Through brutality and cruelty, German settlers dispossessed indigenous Africans of their ancestral lands from 1884 to 1915. When Namibians resisted colonial rule, the Germans responded by meting out violence. German settlers k*lled the Herero and Nama in concentration camps and through military actions, with survivors forced to labour and subjected to diseases, abuse, exhaustion, s*xual exploitation, and medical experimentation. These camps are considered Germany's first concentration camps. Experts estimate German colonial forces wiped out up to 80 per cent of the Herero and 50 per cent of the Nama populations. The German military executed those who refused to surrender their land, imprisoned those who protested and drove the Herero into the Omaheke Desert, where many died of dehydration, starvation and food poisoning.

It was not until 2021 that Germany officially acknowledged its ugly history in Namibia, promising $1.2 billion in funding over 30 years, a mere $40 million a year on average, but only on the condition that Germany approve the expenditures. However, Germany has not returned looted land to its rightful owners to address the stark inequities between white settlers and Black people. 

Video credit: @vicenews

Sources

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2025/5/28/namibia-marks-inaugural-genocide-remembrance-day-with-call-for-reparations

https://thisisafrica.me/politics-and-society/whites-namibia-own-70percent-of-land

https://www.reuters.com/world/africa/namibian-communities-demand-return-land-dispute-over-german-genocide-legacy-2024-03-07

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-56583994

https://www.reuters.com/article/world/namibia-to-make-white-owned-businesses-sell-25-percent-stakes-to-blacks-idUSKBN17F20F

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/3/16/namibia-tribes-lodge-case-against-germany-over-genocide

https://www.gov.na/documents/146489/243786/Genocide+Remembrance+Day+2025.pdf/943da8fe-f23f-ccf3-0765-522d4797a547?t=1748336599780

https://p-crc.org/2019/04/06/not-the-holocaust-but-the-herero

https://www.aljazeera.com/news/2017/3/16/namibia-tribes-lodge-case-against-germany-over-genocide

https://www.bbc.com/news/stories-56583994

https://nsa.org.na/document/namibia-land-statistics-2018

https://www.ecchr.eu/fileadmin/Publikationen/ECCHR_NAMIBIA_DS.pdf

https://www.theholocaustexplained.org/what-was-the-holocaust/what-was-genocide/the-herero-and-namaqua-genocide

SENEGALESE STUDENTS CHASE OFF ISRAELI ENVOY

Student protests have long been a potent force for social and political breakthroughs, igniting broader movements to challenge the establishment that is often in cahoots with imperialist interests.

It’s no different with Senegalese youth standing in solidarity with Palestinians against Israel’s military onslaught in Gaza.

On 27 May, students at the prominent Cheikh Anta Diop University (UCAD) in Dakar demonstrated the West African state’s solidarity with Palestine when they chased away the Israeli ambassador from the campus. Yuval Waks was planning to deliver a talk on international relations practices at the institution.