'Farm victims are not political props': Afrikaner group slams 3,000 white crosses planted in Washington - IOL

Heidie Taljaard installs crosses for her father, mother and sister, Dan, Breggie and Elzabie Brand, on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.

A group of Afrikaners has turned on its own over 3,000 white crosses planted in Washington, accusing the organisers of using farm murder victims as political props.

Afrikaners for SA (AfSA) said Lex Libertas' White Cross Project would give Americans a misleading picture of SA and could deepen racial divisions at home.

Videos of the planting showed volunteers pulling yellow lines taut across the grass to mark out the rows and knocking the crosses into the ground with rubber mallets, each cross carrying a victim's name in black lettering.

The crosses were to stand until 5pm (US time) on Saturday.

"We are Afrikaners. We unequivocally condemn farm killings and all violence against farming communities," AfSA said.

"Victims deserve justice, survivors need support, and rural safety requires urgent action.

"Our concern is that their suffering is being used to tell a misleading story and advance a private political agenda."

AfSA said research showed farm attacks were driven mainly by robbery and other criminal motives, not a coordinated campaign of racial persecution, although it did not rule out racial hatred in some individual attacks.

The group took aim at Lex Libertas' political goal, saying the organisation had openly tied the crosses to its push for American support for white self-governance.

"That political ambition deserves scrutiny on its own merits. The deaths of farm victims cannot serve as a mandate for it," AfSA said.

"The organisers should explain what this spectacle will achieve for those still living with the threat of violence.

"Will it improve policing, speed up emergency responses, or provide lasting support for grieving families?"

AfSA said the Trump administration's aid cuts, visa restrictions and threats of further action showed SA was already being used to score political points in the US, and it feared the display would hand that campaign fresh ammunition ahead of the American midterm elections.

Last week, US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced visa restrictions on foreign nationals that Washington linked to race-based discrimination and uncompensated land seizures in SA.

"Lex Libertas does not speak for all Afrikaners or all South Africans," AfSA said.

"South Africans should not pay the price for a small faction's political point-scoring and fundraising in America."

Lex Libertas, which is presenting the project with the New York Young Republican Club, said in June the aim was to build international support for practical solutions to farm murders, political incitement, race-based discrimination and threats facing minority communities in SA.

"This project will portray the reality of farm murders in one of the most visible locations in the world," Roets said in a statement in June.

"Each cross will represent the name and story of a person whose life was claimed by this crisis.

"We want to ensure that these victims are not forgotten and that the international community can no longer pretend that this problem does not exist."

Lex Libertas said its documentary, Crossed Out: Confronting Persecution in SA, co-directed by Roets, was screened at a closed event at the White House on Thursday.

According to the organisation, the audience included White House and State Department staff and three people affected by farm attacks, Amanda Platt, Heidie Taljaard and Leon Lotz.

"This is an important breakthrough," Roets said of the screening.

"One of our central objectives has been to ensure that the realities facing people and communities in SA are heard directly by those in positions to influence policy."

Roets said Lex Libertas did not expect the White House to fix SA's problems, but that international pressure would contribute to a more viable political arrangement in the country.

The organisation's petition, which supporters also used to sponsor crosses, called on the US to appoint a special envoy for Afrikaners and other cultural minorities and to recognise the pursuit of self-governance in SA as legitimate.

Lex Libertas described its goal as a political order built on freedom, decentralisation and self-governance for "the peoples of SA".

Police recorded one farm murder between April and June this year, down from six in the same three months of 2025, according to the first-quarter crime statistics released by acting police minister Firoz Cachalia on August 28.

Over the same three months, 5,427 people were murdered across the country, Cachalia said.

When the then police minister Senzo Mchunu released the figures for January to March 2025, he said the two farm owners murdered in that quarter were African, as were the two farmworkers and a farm manager, and only one victim, a farm dweller, was white.

"The history of farm murders in the country has always been distorted and reported in an unbalanced way," Mchunu, who has since been suspended, said at the time.

"The truth is that farm murders have always included African people in more numbers."

International relations minister Ronald Lamola rejected claims of a white genocide, the allegation that white South Africans are being systematically killed because of their race, when he spoke at the Council on Foreign Relations in New York earlier this week. 

"It becomes very unfortunate for us to be accused of any form of genocide against white Afrikaners of South African origin," Lamola said.

"What we can say to the people of the United States is that the story of white genocide does not exist, it's fake news, it is not there."