(Luis Cornelio, Headline USA) CBS’s 60 Minutes aired a segment Sunday that appeared aimed at challenging President Donald Trump’s assertions of genocide against Afrikaners in South Africa.
Instead, the report ended up reinforcing key elements of the president’s concerns.
President Donald Trump has repeatedly cited a video of white crosses lining a South African highway as evidence of deadly violence against farmers.
Promoting its segment on X, 60 Minutes suggested the display was misleading. The show claimed that “when 60 Minutes traveled to the site, the crosses were gone. Anderson Cooper tracked down the farmer who placed them there.”
But the farmer himself undercut any suggestion of fabrication.
This video is incredible. 60 Minutes goes to South Africa, clearly looking to debunk narratives about white farmers being targeted and killed with impunity, talk to farmers who have countless stories of their family and friends being tortured and killed with no arrests.
Would… https://t.co/9UDYCDefwD
— Blake Neff (@BlakeSNeff) February 23, 2026
KwaZulu-Natal farmer Darryl Brown explained that the crosses were not burial sites but temporary memorials honoring farmers who had been killed.
“It definitely wasn’t a burial site,” Brown said. “I mean, those crosses were there for less than 48 hours. It was purely an avenue of crosses that we planted there um in honor of commercial farmers in South Africa that had lost their lives.”
Brown said his 82-year-old father was viciously attacked in 2016. In the years that followed, three of his close friends were murdered on their farms.
Glen and Vida Rafferty were killed on their property in 2021. Farmer Toli Nell, another close friend, was murdered on his farm in 2024.
Brown said the crosses were erected in 2021 and 2024 to honor the slain farmers.
During the attack on Nell’s farm, his son was tied up and beaten as thieves ransacked the property. “No one has been arrested,” Cooper noted.
“My life has changed. I’ve got nothing to look forward to,” Nell’s widow said through tears. She said she would not describe the killings as genocide, but as opportunistic attacks targeting farmers.
Clips of the segment quickly went viral on X, where critics described the broadcast as a self-own for 60 Minutes.
The killings of Afrikaners have become a focal point of the Trump administration’s foreign policy. The president raised the issue directly with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who disputes claims of mass murder.
Watch the full 60 Minutes segment below:
