The Witkruis Monument — which means White Cross Monument in the language spoken by South Africa’s white Afrikaner minority — is a memorial only to white people who were killed on farms over the last three decades. It’s a visceral snapshot seized on by some South Africans to drive a discredited narrative that white farmers in the majority Black country are being targeted in a widespread, race-based system of persecution.

The killings of farmers and farmworkers, regardless of race, are a tiny percentage of the country’s high level of crime, and they typically occur during armed robberies, according to available statistics and two studies carried out over the last 25 years.

Yet because wealthier white people own 72% of South Africa’s privately owned farms, according to census data, they are disproportionately affected by these often brutal crimes. Black people own just 4% of the country’s privately owned farmland, and the rest is owned by people who are mixed race or of Indian heritage.