The South African Road is incorrectly identified as a “funeral site” by the US President

The P39-1 is an anonymous section of a thinly arranged highway connecting small cities in Newcastle and Normandine in South Africa, at a four-hour driving from Johannesburg.

This week, the road on the road, which is moving mainly along the edge of the farms, nestled in the distant hills of the Quazulu Natal province in the country, turned out to be an unexpected subject of global attention.

On Wednesday, many South Africans were among those who watch live around the world when US President Donald Trump ambushed his South African counterpart Cyril Ramafosa with a video, which made the white people persecuted. He had said earlier that “genocide” was happening.

The most remarkable scene in the video was an air photo of thousands of white crosses near the country – Trump’s President Trump has repeatedly said more than a thousand Africani killed in recent years.

The president did not mention where the road was, although the film was quickly connected to Normandain.

But people who live nearby know better than anyone that his claim is not true.

The BBC visited the area on Thursday, the day after the oval office, to find that the crosses of the P39-1 were long gone.

There is no room for a funeral and the road looks like anyone else. A new grain mill is built along a section where the crosses stood once.

What we found was a community shocked to be under the spotlight, and a truth about the crosses, which reveals a lot about the delicate balance of racial relations in South Africa.

Roland Colier is a man who understands both.

A farmer’s farmer in South Africa, it was the murder of his aunt and Uncle Glenn and the Vida Raferti, marked to death at their home five years ago, which led to the erection of crosses.

Their death on their farm by attackers who stole valuables from their home led to a public protest from agricultural communities and the temporary planting of the crosses by fellow Africamen who wanted to emphasize their killings among other farmers who were killed in South Africa.

“So the video you have seen,” he tells me as we stand together by the road, “happened along this section of the road.”

Pointing to the hill, to a village where many black families live in mud huts, he explains: “There were crosses planted on both sides of the road, which were taken in farms, agricultural killings. All the way from the bridge below to where we are currently standing.

“The baptisms were symbolic of what was happening in the country.”

One of the neighbors of Rafferty, businessman Rob Hoatson, told the BBC how he organized the crosses to attract public attention, such was the shock of the couple’s death.

“This is not a place for funeral,” he explained, saying that Trump was predisposed to “exaggeration”, adding that he did not mind the image of the crosses used. “It was a memorial. No permanent memorial was erected. It was a temporary memorial.”

G -N Collyer continues to deal with farms in the area, but says the two sons of Raffrtys left after their parents’ killings. The younger one, he explains, moved to Australia while the elder sold and left agriculture to move to the city.

Many people remain scared of their future in South Africa, which has one of the highest killings in the world.

In 2022, two local men, Dr. Fiken Ngnia and Sibenic Madondo, were convicted of Rafrtis’s murders, as well as robbery and respectively sentenced to life and 21 years in prison.

For many of the local community, it was a rare act of justice, with thousands of killings remaining unresolved in a country that South Africa President Cyril Ramafosa told President Trump still did not engage in his increasing percentage of crime.

Rafrtis’s killings caused a period of increased racial tension in the area.

South Africa’s police minister was forced to visit to try to bring peace, with protests by Africari, mirrored by the allegations of some members of the local black community of abuse by white farmers.

Against the backdrop of all this, Collier tells me that despite the misleading use of his family’s video, he is pleased that President Trump has emphasized attacks on white farmers.

“The whole procession was to increase the international media coverage of the whole thing,” he reasoned. “And to understand what we are actually going through and the life we ​​must live here right now in South Africa.

“One has to enter a house before dark, you live behind electric fences. This is the life we ​​live right now and do not want to live such a life.”

His fears would hear with many of all races, in a country that suffered more than 26,000 murders last year. The bigger part of the victims are black, according to security experts.

President Trump made a proposal for asylum for all African, with the first group of 49 arriving in Washington earlier this month.

But G -n Colier tells me that he will stay in Normandin and does not intend to leave South Africa.

“It’s not only easy for me to leave what my father, what my grandfather worked for, what my great -grandfather worked for, and how hard they worked so that I can collect what I can contribute to today,” he says.

“This is difficult, you just pack after many generations and I try to leave the country.

“Unfortunately, white Africanists carry the main weight to be a” storm “(farmer) in South Africa … But at this stage I definitely wouldn’t remember to go, I still love this country too much.”

And as we split, G -n Collyer offers a note of optimism for the future.

“I think if we can just join our hands and I think there are more than enough people in this country – black -white – who are ready to join their hands and try to make this country successful.”

There are many others in the local community, for which agriculture has gone back generations.

Along the way to Normandain, we meet Betwell Mabasso.

The 63-year-old grew up in the area and tells us that he is surprised to learn that his community has made international news more so that it can be cited by the US President as a “proof” about targeting white farmers.

“Nothing like this happens here,” he says in his native Zulu. “We were shocked as a community when the killings happened and sad for this family.

“I lived here because I was a little boy and it is a calm area. Nothing has happened since then.”

In the years of the death of Raffrtys, there have been reports of allegations from some inhabitants of Black Farms that local police have failed to attend cases related to black people of the same urgency as the couple’s death.

I ask another local farm worker, Mbongiseni Shibe, 40 years old, what relationships were now between farmers and their mostly black staff.

“We manage any problems that arise through discussions, if it does not work, we ask the police to intervene,” he says. “Usually incidents such as livestock enter our fields and the police help us to get it back.”

The abusive past of the racial segregation of South Africa is not lost by the d -Shibe and how many delicate racial questions can be here.

“We come from a difficult past in this country with white people. I remember those times of abuse, even as a young boy, especially on the farms here,” he tells me.

“But we have released it, we don’t use this to punish anyone.”

Additional reporting from Ed Habershon