What is the situation in South Africa?

While Mr Trump’s sincerity about the apparent persecution of white farmers in South Africa might be open to question, particularly because of the sudden nature of his interest, the issue is a serious concern for many.

Post-Apartheid South Africa is still rife with racial tension and there is a popular view that the redistribution of land to those historically dispossessed is an important step on the road to reconciliation, allowing the country to move on and heal the wounds of racist colonial rule.

According to official data, white South Africans account for just 8.4 per cent of the country’s population but own 23.6 per cent of the land, a fact that is especially damning given that black landowners account for just 1.2 per cent of the total and the majority of corporate-held land is operated by white executives, putting the white-owned total closer to 73 per cent.

Political parties like the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) advocate land seizures and redistribution and its leader, Julius Malema, has said the compensatory measure is needed to “teach whites a lesson” - a sentiment that has been roundly criticised as inflammatory hate speech.

Mbuyiseni Ndlozi, the EFF’s national spokesman, has similarly stated that white farmers, descended from Dutch and English colonial invaders, “have taken [the land] through a violent crime against humanity”.

Acts of violence have been carried out against white farmers for years, which many right-wing parties around the world have drawn attention to as examples of “white genocide” and “ethnic cleansing”. But the government of president Cyril Ramaphosa insists such crimes are part of the wider social problems facing law and order in South Africa and are not a racial matter. The country's national murder rate is currently 34.1 per 100,000 citizens, according to the South African Police Service.

White rights groups disagree with Mr Ramaphosa. AfriForum, for one, claimed there were 90 recorded attacks on Caucasian homesteaders in the first three months of 2018 alone, a rate of one every five days.

It’s worth noting this is extremely high compared with police figures, which report 47 murders and 638 attacks on farm owners (race not specified) in 2017/18. That compares with a high of 140 killings and 1,069 attacks in 2001-02.

Joe Wallen, reporting for The Independent earlier this year, met with a number of white victims to record their first-hand accounts of the assaults, rapes, torture, home invasions and burglaries they had suffered in isolated rural areas.

“What is happening to us is torture, it is slaughter, it is brutal – it is revenge. The world doesn’t know what is happening in South Africa,” said Gabriel Stols, whose younger brother Kyle was gunned down by assailants.

AfriForum argue that a motion President Ramaphosa’s government is considering whether to allow the state to expropriate farmland without paying compensation implicitly encourages violence and the vengeful targeting of white South Africans. They suggest Mr Ramaphosa’s party, the African National Congress (ANC), is toying with the issue to win favour with the EFF with an election due next year.