'Kill the farmer' song not a call to murder, S.African president

JOHANNESBURG - A chant that US leader Donald Trump used to back claims of white genocide in South Africa is an apartheid-era slogan that did not really mean for farmers to be killed, the president said Tuesday.

Trump showed clips of an opposition politician chanting "Kill the Boer, kill the farmer" at tense talks with President Cyril Ramaphosa last week where he repeated unfounded claims of an orchestrated campaign of violence against white farmers.

He also asked why the opposition politician seen making the chant, opposition firebrand Julius Malema -- whom Trump mistakenly said was in government -- had not been arrested.

Ramaphosa told journalists the government accepted court rulings that the controversial slogan should be considered in the context of the liberation struggle against the brutal system of white-minority rule called apartheid.

"It's not meant to be a message that elicits or calls upon anyone to be killed," Ramaphosa said.

"We are a country where freedom of expression is in the bedrock of our constitutional arrangements," he said, brushing aside the suggestion that Malema should be arrested.

Dipuo Mokone (L) and daughter Mmalethabo Mokone (R) watch a TV broadcast of a bilateral meeting between South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and US President Donald Trump at their home in Silverton, Pretoria on May 21, 2025. (Credit: AFP)

Malema's continued use of the chant after the end of apartheid in 1994 infuriates many in South Africa, and some groups have attempted to have it banned as hate speech.

Malema, the vocal leader of the populist, Marxist-inspired Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) party, is also seen in the video shown at the White House as claiming, "We are going to occupy land, we require no permission."

This fuels claims repeated by Trump that a revised land expropriation act will allow the government to seize white farmland.

The law contains a "nil compensation" clause but the government says this would only be in exceptional circumstances and after efforts to seek a "just and equitable" settlement.

The revised law brings the judiciary directly into decisions about expropriation, Ramaphosa said.

Scenarios of the government taking property without compensation could include situations where the owners could not be traced or were heavily indebted, and the property was required for the public interest, he said.

The Democratic Alliance, the second-largest party in the government of national unity, has gone to court to challenge the "nil compensation" provision, which they say is open to abuse.