A STRAW-MAN argument is a logical fallacy that involves misrepresenting an opponent’s position in a way that is easier to attack. Instead of addressing the actual argument, the arguer distorts it, often exaggerating or simplifying it, and then attacks the distorted version. As Alphabet’s Gemini puts it: “This is like arguing with a “straw man” or scarecrow, which is easy to knock down because it’s not a real person.”

After literally arguing with a machine by attacking xAI’s ‘Grok” for an incident in which it began interjecting normal conversation with weird comments about South Africa’s alleged ‘White Genocide” (see here), and failing to report the truth of the matter, the press moved on to misrepresenting, and practically reinventing a meeting between Donald Trump and Cyril Ramaphosa, perhaps in the belief, the public are idiots?

This was no ambush as moral watchdogs and thought leaders put it, in instantly propagating news feeds but rather an intervention. With cloned, ready-to-consume buzz points, the world was asked to ignore the evidence, and disbelieve their eyes.

As anyone watching the event, would have noted, it was a simple question by a member of the press which started the ball rolling. Were claims of a ‘white genocide’ true? Ramaphosa’s awkward response was revealing — the claims couldn’t possibly be correct — had he not arrived in Washington with a cabinet member and leader of the opposition John Steenhuisen, who apparently is white?

If this were the case, he suggested, wouldn’t John be dead alongside, two champion golfers Retief Goosen and Ernie Els, in addition to apartheid financier, Johann Rupert, all white?

Trump had prepared his response to this dramatic moment, given the controversy which had erupted following the proclamation that Afrikaners, in particular farmers, would be granted refugee status. Neither the proclamation nor the earlier Presidential order suspending aid programmes with our country, mention the term ‘genocide’ in relation to the Afrikaners.

The press are lying to you

“The only time the word appears”, tweeted, Breitbart’s Joel Pollak, “is in relation to the ICJ case”, and claims of a genocide in South Africa, he says, ‘are premature’.

On Wednesday Trump openly stated, his mind ‘wasn’t decided on the matter’, rather, his administration was being inundated with requests for asylum, alongside pages and pages of documented deaths of farmers (472 attacks in 2020 alone), and he wanted our President to watch a video.

The lights in his office were dimmed, and the world was met with a montage of genocidal statements by far-left MP Julius Malema, an entire stadium chanting “Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer”. Another segment, a procession of vehicles traveling on a road marked with crosses, one for every farm murder, a well-known demonstration was shown.

At first, Ramaphosa, grinned, attempting to laugh off the multimedia presentation. Then when the crosses segment arrived, he practically fell off his seat, dropping his composure. ‘Where is this?’ He asked, feigning disbelief, ‘perhaps I better investigate?

Trump had already explained his intervention — getting this out in the open, will allow South Africa to resolve the problem, ‘we all want the killings to end’.

That problem word, Genocide.

The crime of genocide, which arose in the aftermath of the Holocaust, has nothing to do with numbers. The magnitude of the event is relatively unimportant, and it is a common fallacy that a genocide must run its course, in order for the parties to be interdicted.

Where suicide is the intention to kill oneself, (regicide the intention to murder a King, fratricide,the intention to kill ones brothers and sisters), genocide is the ‘intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial, or religious group’. What is important here is the intention to commit genocide, dolus specialis, which makes it an international crime.

The objective is what makes it a unique crime distinct from national crime statistics like homicide rates, road fatalities and deaths by disease etc. Resorting to overall homicide rates here is a sad attempt to obfuscate murders within a trade or profession. The obvious hate crimes which often precede land invasions, replete with bloodied messaging, use of torture, are disguised and dressed up as mere criminality by the regime.

The central claim made by groups such as Afriforum is that farm murders are being ignored by South Africa’s authorities, who turn a blind eye, by allowing both land invasions, and horrific incidents of slaughter to go unchecked. Instead of investigating, the claims are instantly dismissed as the ravings of white supremacists, and yet every farm murder is a loss to the country’s productive capacity.

The European Union’s Centre for Information Policy and Security (ECIPS) Ricardo Baretzky issued a statement this week asserting “violence against white farmers in South Africa is a verified fact and not misleading. He emphasized that ECIPS’s intelligence confirms the existence of racially motivated attacks and that the phrase “Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer” is more than just rhetoric — it represents a real and dangerous threat.

Think of the outcry if 7 CEOs were murdered in as many months?

The signing into law of an ‘expropriation with nil compensation’ amendment, alongside the condonation of fringe slogans such as ‘One Settler on Bullet’ and ‘Kill the Boer’ by South Africa’s apex court, (surely these slogans do not represent our nation’s collective opposition to apartheid, have no place in the 21st century?) signals that neither Pretoria nor our nations jurists, has an intention of protecting property rights in the country, nor of defending the rights of farmers on the land, who now qualify for asylum in the USA.

Yet people like CNN Anderson Cooper and Holocaust denialist Whoopi Goldberg were this week parroting a different narrative, the self-same straw-man arguments promoted by Gareth Newham, at the Institute for Security Studies in South Africa, who can see nothing wrong with a TRC submission admitting statements such as “Kill the Boer” drove farm murders, as Ramaphosa’s delegation attempted to spin a fable about crime.

Saying ‘black and white are murdered equally in South Africa’ is little respite for the victims of criminality.

NOTE: After briefing the meeting about the Congo, where a peace deal between Rwanda and DRC is about to be signed, only a fool would use a page from the briefing to cast shade. South Africa is not only a party to the conflict, a leader on the continent, but earlier this year, almost went to war with Rwanda over the deaths of 14 SANDF personnel.

Tag: DRC