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HOW I SURVIVED WHITE GENOCIDE IN SOUTH AFRICA  
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Ryan Cooper
May 26, 2025
The American Prospect
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_ To be safe: Live openly among Black folks, wander around by
yourself, and take public transport everywhere. _

President Donald Trump holds up articles as evidence of a white
genocide during a meeting with South Africa’s President Cyril
Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House, May 21, 2025, in
Washington., Evan Vucci/AP Photo

 

Donald Trump and Elon Musk recently met
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with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the White House. Trump
dimmed the lights and showed a video consisting of various right-wing
propaganda products purporting to prove that white South Africans are
being singled out for their race and killed en masse. It’s a
“genocide,” Trump insisted. “They’re being executed, and they
happen to be white, and most of them happen to be farmers. I don’t
know how you explain that.”

“Death, death, death,” he added.

I can speak to the reality of the situation. I lived for two years in
South Africa, right in the teeth of the terror, as a Peace Corps
volunteer from 2009 to 2011. I made it through my two years of service
through an astute and considered strategy of taking no precautions
whatsoever against roving genocidal murder squads. To quote Peregrin
Took from _The Lord of the Rings_: “The closer we are to danger, the
further we are from harm.”

Accordingly, I lived with a Black host family in a remote village
about 100 kilometers north of the city of Kuruman (where the famous
Dr. Livingstone did missionary work in the 19th century) in Northern
Cape province, and about 100 kilometers south of the border with
Botswana. This was part of the former apartheid bantustan of
Bophuthatswana, and as a result, I was the only white person in the
entire village, and to my knowledge no other white people than other
Peace Corps volunteers lived in an 80-kilometer radius. I would
routinely go on hours-long runs down the local gravel roads, or
hours-long walks up and down the neighboring creek bed, which was
usually dry—all by myself.

This cunning strategy of hiding in plain sight and constantly
wandering around in remote locations by myself where I could have been
easily dispatched and left for the vultures worked brilliantly. The
fact that every person in the village—indeed, probably most of the
people in neighboring villages too—knew who I was and where I lived
only added to my protection.

This also explains why Elon Musk is so obsessed with this subject.
Given that he grew up as a cosseted scion of privilege
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in apartheid South Africa, going to all-white private schools and
growing up in a large, heavily secured compound, waited on hand and
foot by Black servants, he was actually in a lot _more_ danger than
someone wandering the bush and taking public transport by himself.

The nearest grocery store was in Kuruman, and since I did not have a
car (my Peace Corps stipend amounted to about $350 a month) I rode the
public bus to get there. Again, I was often the only white person in
sight, on the bus and in the stores and at the crowded bus station.

Alas, the South Africa bus network is rather thin in the impoverished
and depopulated hinterland of Northern Cape, so if I wanted to go east
to Pretoria, I would often hitchhike to Vryburg, often riding in the
bed of a “bakkie” (pickup) with several day laborers. (Pro tip for
this situation: Put a bottle opener on your keychain in case someone
wants to open a bottle of Carling Black Label at 7:00 in the morning;
he’ll appreciate not having to use his teeth.) From there, I could
catch a public taxi—typically a 22-passenger van—to Pretoria,
again, often the only white face aboard.

The 2010 World Cup took place in South Africa, and so I joined some
high school friends on a trip to see several games. (Since American
tickets were out of reach price-wise, we decided to root for Ivory
Coast.) We practically circled the whole country in a pitifully
underpowered hatchback, mostly staying at public campsites.

Thanks to my genius foresight, not once did I encounter anything but
polite courtesy from the Black folks constantly surrounding me on all
sides, except for once when a criminal miscreant ran off with a pair
of shoes I had just bought. If anything, people were rather
protective, surprised to see a white face on the working-class
transport system, making sure I knew where I was going and that I got
there safely. No doubt they were just trying to get me to keep my
guard down.

One might react to my story by concluding that this whole white
genocide story is a racist lie cooked up by white supremacists in
Europe and America. After all, even right-wing Afrikaner lobbying
groups
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say it’s a delirious fantasy. One might add that while South Africa
does have a very serious crime problem, it in no way resembles
genocide, and in fact, white murder victims are underrepresented
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population. One might further add that Ramaphosa’s cabinet has eight
white members
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one of whom was present at the White House, and one of the articles
Trump waved around in the meeting was actually from the Democratic
Republic of the Congo.

To which I reply: How dare you impugn the honor of our sagacious
president Donald Trump? This man has never, ever, not once,
regurgitated flagrant lying propaganda
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or crack-brained Facebook memes
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in public—especially not racist ones
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If there’s anyone to trust for detailed knowledge about the inner
workings of African countries, it’s this man.

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Ryan Cooper is the Prospect’s managing editor, and author of ‘How
Are You Going to Pay for That?: Smart Answers to the Dumbest Question
in Politics.’ He was previously a national correspondent for The
Week.

* South Africa; Race; Immigration;
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