The website Your News Wire—a mountebank TWS Fact Check has dinged time and time again—claimed in a headline this weekend that Barack Obama said “I fully support seizure of white farmers’ land in South Africa.” The Obama speech referenced in the article was delivered in Johannesburg at an event honoring Nelson Mandela last month.
Your News Wire relies heavily on an article from the blog Gateway Pundit that in turn primarily quotes and links to a segment on the Fox News show Tucker Carlson Tonight. During the show, Carlson criticized Obama’s praise for president Cyril Ramaphosa “inspiring new hope into this country” due to, as Carlson argues, Ramaphosa’s effort to “change the South African constitution, and he’ll do it for the explicit purpose of persecuting a racial minority; seizing their land without compensation.”
In short: Obama did not, as Your News Wire claims, say he “fully support[s] seizure of white farmers’ land.” Instead, the alleged quote was a bastardization of something a TV host said as this host was himself paraphrasing an analysis of the political motivations of a South African politician. How did Your News Wire get from there to here? Who can say. (But you can watch Obama’s entire speech here, or read the transcript here, if you are so inclined.)
On Tuesday, Reuters reported that the “South African ruling African National Congress will push ahead with plans to amend the constitution to allow for the expropriation of land without compensation, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Tuesday, a move likely to unnerve investors.”
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