Johannesburg - Lobby group Afriforum has been blamed for damaging the country's image by spreading false information about land reform and "farm killings".
A number of people have taken to social media calling for the group to be labelled as "white supremacists" and not a "lobby group".
Afriforum leaders Kallie Kriel and Ernst Roest travelled to the US in May saying they were going to share issues around land expropriation without compensation and farm killings.
They were hosted on Fox News, a US news channel that's known for its false right-wing reporting, and met with US President Donald Trump's national security advisor John Bolton.
AfriForum must be held responsible for the false propaganda they are spreading across the world. It not only has reputation damage for our country but carries economic repercussions. Their misinformation campaign must be met with distain and rejection.
— Fikile (Mr Fearfokkol) (@MbalulaFikile) August 23, 2018
Some people have tweeted that it was this trip to the US that helped garner US hostility towards South Africa.
Trump angered many South Africans when he tweeted on Thursday morning that he had told his secretary of state Mark Pompeo to study “South Africa’s land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large-scale killing of white farmers”.
Afriforum shouldn’t get away with smearing the brand of a whole country like this. Especially when we know they thumb sucked these stats deliberately. Surely that amounts to treason
— Firebrand (@simphiwedana) August 23, 2018
The government responded by labelling Trump's comments as "narrow" and divisive.
The ANC's head of elections Fikile Mbalula said Afriforum should be held responsible for spreading "propaganda" around the world.
"AfriForum must be held responsible for the false propaganda they are spreading across the world. It not only has reputation damage for our country but carries economic repercussions. Their misinformation campaign must be met with disdain and rejection," he said.
Can we now all stop pretending that AfriForum is nothing more than a revanchist white ethno state project?
They want to bring an Afrikaner apartheid state back. That’s it. ‘Civil rights’, my ass.
— mbappé ka sithayi (@comradesipho) August 23, 2018
Afriforum's Kallie Kriel denied that the organisation had spread lies, he said they spread facts about the ANC's plans on land reform.
The group has been hostile to talks of land reform and has gone the extra mile in spreading its disapproval.
It is not hysteria, @afriforum simply spread the FACT that President #CyrilRamaphosa announced that he and the #ANC have decided to change the SA Constitution to allow #ExpropriationWithoutCompensation. We also simply made public that farmers are being killed disproportionately. https://t.co/IWwjhVqlAk
— Kallie Kriel (@kalliekriel) August 23, 2018
It has caused a number of controversies over the years. Earlier this month, the group was called out for causing panic within the farming community after it published an unverified list of 195 properties which it says the government plans to expropriate.
In March, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation called Afriforum out for fearmongering regarding unsupported claims of targeted killings of white farmers.
Donald Trump and Fox News are two examples of how seriously moronic the ‘civilized’ West is. I guess @afriforum knew they had counterparts in them. News Flash: #LandExpropriation WILL happen without hindrance. It is the will of the people. Salute
— Vezuchiy Fanashnikov (@fanamokoena) August 23, 2018
This call followed remarks by an Australian home affairs minister who said the country would consider fast-tracking visa applications of white South Africans because of farm murders and threats of their land being seized.
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