Reuters
US President Donald Trump showed a screenshot of a Reuters video taken in the Democratic Republic of Congo as part of what he falsely presented on Wednesday as evidence of mass killings of white South Africans.
"These are all white farmers being buried," said Trump, holding up a print-out of an article accompanied by the picture during a contentious Oval Office meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa.
The video, published by Reuters on February 3 and subsequently verified by the news agency's fact check team, showed humanitarian workers lifting body bags in Goma in the DRC. The image was pulled from Reuters footage shot after deadly battles with Rwanda-backed M23 rebels.
The blog post showed to Ramaphosa by Trump during the White House meeting was published by American Thinker, a conservative online magazine, about conflict and racial tensions in SA and the DRC.
SA needs to work with its African counterparts and look to the successes of North African markets, such as Morocco, to understand how it can learn from them.
Djaffar Al Katanty,Reuters video journalist
The post did not caption the image but identified it as a "YouTube screengrab" with a link to a video news report about the DRC on YouTube, which credited Reuters.
The White House did not respond to a request for comment.
Andrea Widburg, managing editor at American Thinker and author of the post in question, wrote in reply to a Reuters query that Trump had "misidentified the image".
She added, however, that the post, which referred to what it called Ramaphosa's "dysfunctional, race-obsessed Marxist government", had "pointed out the increasing pressure placed on white South Africans".
The footage from which the picture was taken shows a mass burial after an M23 assault on Goma, filmed by Reuters video journalist Djaffar Al Katanty.
"That day, it was extremely difficult for journalists to get in. I had to negotiate directly with M23 and coordinate with the International Committee of the Red Cross to be allowed to film," Al Katanty said.
"Only Reuters has video."
Al Katanty said seeing Trump holding the article with the screengrab of his video came as a shock.
"In view of all the world, President Trump used my image, used what I filmed in the DRC to try to convince President Ramaphosa that in his country, white people are being killed by black people," Al Katanty said.
Ramaphosa visited Washington this week to try to mend ties with the US after persistent criticism from Trump in recent months over SA's land laws, foreign policy, and alleged bad treatment of its white minority, which SA denies.
Trump interrupted the televised meeting with Ramaphosa to play a video, which he said showed evidence of genocide of white farmers in SA. The conspiracy theory, which has circulated in far-right chat rooms for years, is based on false claims.
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