02/22/2026: Left Behind, South Africa's Refugees, Is That Art?

0:07Drive 350 miles from the nation's capital to McDowell County, West Virginia, where affordability is the difference between buying groceries and heating a home. Clean drinking water is hard to come by here. A turn of the tap can look like this. This shouldn't be the case anywhere in the world, let alone in the wealthiest nation in the world.

0:34Cecilia Vega:There is one group of refugees being welcomed to the United States. President Trump says white farmers from South Africa are victims of a genocide. These are burial sites right here. Burial sites. over a thousand of white farmers. We went to South Africa to see for ourselves. It definitely wasn't a burial site. I mean, those crosses were there for less than 48 hours. Rafiq Anadol invited us inside this space at his L.A. studio. Every image that surrounds us, Anadol created using artificial intelligence. So those are not real birds? Nope. Take it in. Whoa. A hypnotic flow of shapes and colors that can make you feel like Alice in Wonderland stumbled into Studio 54.

1:30Is this a party trick? I don't think so. I feel like it's a new form of art.

1:37Cecilia Vega:I'm Leslie Stahl. I'm Scott Pelley. I'm Bill Whitaker. I'm Anderson Cooper. I'm Sharon Alfonsi. I'm John Wertheim. I'm Cecilia Vega. Those stories end in our last minute A Hockey Great reflects on America's goals Tonight on 60 Minutes

2:00Starting a business can seem like a daunting task Unless you have a partner like Shopify They have the tools you need to start and grow your business From designing a website, to marketing, to selling and beyond Shopify can help with everything you need There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz, and Allbirds continue to trust and use them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into... Sign up for your$1 per month trial at shopify.com slash special offer. For some, these are the boom times. 401ks are surging. The stock market has hit an all-time high. But drive just 350 miles from the nation's capital, and the conversation isn't about how to get rich, but how to survive.

2:47McDowell County, West Virginia, was once the nation's largest coal producer. It is now one of the poorest places in the country, where the food stamp program started and later the opioid crisis took hold. Today, one in three households there depends on those food stamps, and now the program that has fed families for decades is facing the largest cuts in history. We went to McDowell County last month and learned that this is an all-too-familiar pattern. Government help comes and goes, promises are made and broken, and the people are left behind. McDowell County sits deep in the southern coal fields of West Virginia, stretching more than 500 square miles across the Appalachian Mountains.

3:36There's just one traffic light and more churches than we could count. It's a place where clean drinking water is hard to come by. A turn of the tap can look like this. I think if you would ask probably nine out of ten individuals here, they would tell you that they feel very much forgotten. By who? Everybody. The government. Every institution that you can think of. So tell me about the congregation. Pastor Brad Davis grew up in the coalfields just over the county line and now leads congregations at five United Methodist churches in McDowell. He spends his days listening to those who trust God, each other, and not much else.

4:18I've heard directly people say, well, why don't people just move? My response to that is, why should we? Why should we have to move? This is home. Now we're coming into Aniwalt. Home sweet home. Betty Stepp has lived in the town of Annewalt for all of her 76 years. There's Jackie. Everybody honks at everybody? Long enough to remember when there was still a school, a theater, and a doctor. If you run out of milk, you've got to drive how far? 45 minutes. 45 minutes. Two mountains. That's if you can afford a car. Many here can't. Yet the only business left in town... To be on their best behavior.

5:00Tom and Donald's mechanic shop. This is Tom. Hi, how are you? This is Donald. The famous Donald. Donald and Tom are beloved by all the widows in this area. A retired teacher's aide, Betty and her husband live on a fixed income. These days, everything feels expensive. If I go to the grocery store, I can't get out of there in less than$200. And that's a week. Sometimes it's$300. dollars. Groceries are really high. What have you had to cut back on in these times? Beef for sure. I cut back on chicken, vegetables. She's not alone. Across the country, families are feeling the squeeze. Food prices are almost 20 percent higher today than in 2022.

5:53I've heard a lot of folks from this community say if we don't help each other, no one's going to help us. Nobody's We save each other. Linda McKinney runs the county's largest food bank. You're allowed to come once a month. Entirely on donations and volunteers. Since the government shut down this past fall, when Americans around the country lost SNAP benefits or food stamps for weeks, Linda says more new faces have been coming in. Lately, we have a lot of young mothers that come, and they'll say, I never thought I'd have to come. And the children is what breaks my heart. They didn't ask to be brought into this situation, and they suffer daily.

6:33Every weekend, more than 100 children receive backpacks filled with food so they have something to eat when they're not in school. The thing that we're finding, we have parents that say, well, my kid didn't get a snap bag. And then you find out the child on Friday is eating that food on the bus. They're hungry. They're so hungry, the food that's supposed to last them through the weekend, they're eating on the bus. They're eating on the bus. It's a tale of two economies. At the White House, you'll hear about job growth and victory over inflation. We just had fantastic reports on inflation way down.

7:08But in McDowell, the median household income is about$30 ,000. Affordability isn't a buzzword here. It's the difference between buying groceries or paying for heat. In the 1940s, McDowell County was rich in coal jobs. These mines powered America, helping to build railroads and cities. At its peak, nearly 100 ,000 people lived here, earning some of the nation's highest hourly wages. But as machines moved in, mining jobs dwindled and the local economy collapsed. In 1960, John F. Kennedy campaigned for president here. I think there are at least four or five things the government can do. The poverty he witnessed led him to launch the Modern Food Stamp Program.

7:57McDowell County residents were the first recipients. Today in McDowell, there are fewer than 1 ,000 coal jobs left and only 17 ,000 people remain. We lack so much. We lack jobs. Just in the county alone, there is not enough jobs for everyone. 26-year-old Tabitha Collins was a stay-at-home mom until her fiancé was hit by a car on the job last year and left disabled. And how often are you here? I'm here five days a week. She works at a local nonprofit, Big Creek People in Action, and is the sole income earner for her family of six. Along with caring for their toddler, she's also helping to raise her fiancé's three younger siblings.

8:42It's up to you to raise these kids in a decent manner, you know, and try to teach them about the drug epidemic and how it can affect others, because that's a lot of what we struggle with. In a county ravaged by opioids, it's a common story. The epidemic claimed a generation of parents, leaving family members like Tabitha raising more children on less. Even with food stamps, she often comes up short. We still struggle food-wise. I still have to take a lot out of my payday, which therefore doesn't go towards bills. And in the wintertime, our power is very high. You live in paycheck to paycheck? Yes.

9:29And when you say the electrical bills were high, how high are we talking? In the month of December, my electrical bill was$480. You got a shutoff notice. We sure did. I mean, it was scary. I was trying to figure out which bill is more important, you know, and it comes down to that. That choice is about to become more difficult. SNAP and Medicaid benefits are facing the biggest federal funding cuts in history, more than a trillion dollars over the next decade, as a result of President Trump's sweeping domestic policy bill passed last year. It will be up to states to pick up more of the costs, and recipients will face stricter work requirements.

10:15Tens of thousands of West Virginians will likely lose benefits. We rely on the benefits very much, and it's not because we're taking advantage of the government. It's because we actually need these things. I wonder if you think that that's what the perception is that some people have. I do, but I don't believe that. I mean, we are, a lot of us are working citizens, and we're still barely making it by. Outsiders are often quick to assume this is Trump country, but politics here defy easy labels. For decades, McDowell voted blue, backing Barack Obama in 2008 and Bernie Sanders in the 2016 presidential primary.

11:02In the last three elections, President Trump won the county, which had the lowest voter participation in the state. I think we as a community collectively are so desperate to see some sort of change that when someone comes along and says, I'm going to make coal great again, we desperately cling to that with a death grip. And I think that goes a long way in explaining why the political climate here has shifted the way it has. Earlier this month, coal executives and miners handed President Trump a trophy, declaring him the, quote, undisputed champion of beautiful, clean coal, after his latest executive order aimed at boosting the coal industry.

11:56In McDowell, whether from the White House or the State House, they've heard it all before. What are the promises that have been made and not kept? Economic resurgence, renaissance of the coal industry, the elimination of poverty, fixing our water systems. Big promises. Big promises, and nothing ever changes. Nowhere is the failure of government more clear than in the county's water supply, which at times is not clear at all. Few trust that it's safe enough to drink, and angry residents have documented the black and brown that oozes from aging pipes and contamination left behind from the coal industry.

12:42West Virginia's governor recently set aside$8.3 million in federal funds to upgrade sewage and water lines in McDowell, a drop in the bucket compared to what county and state officials say is still needed. This is tap water. When Pastor Brad isn't in church, he's often pleading with politicians to do more. You see this as a public health crisis? Absolutely. There are people in parts of this county who haven't taken a hot shower in six years or longer because the fumes from the water makes them physically ill. Reports of skin rashes and burns are not uncommon. Many families spend upwards of$150 a month for bottled water on top of their water bills.

13:30It's a luxury not everyone can afford. So they fill up here at this old mine shaft shooting water from the side of a mountain. I think it's going to be hard for a lot of folks to get their mind around that you've got American citizens getting a ride to a spring on the side of the road to bring a jug to fill up because that's their only access to water. And it should be hard for people to wrap their minds around because this shouldn't be the case. This shouldn't be the case anywhere in the world, let alone in the wealthiest nation in the world. To ease the burden, Betty Stepp and other retirees, the youngest of whom is 70, go door-to-door delivering heavy cases of water to neighbors.

14:16I think our government needs to hear us. We've worked our whole life here. Why won't they help us? Does it matter who's in charge? It doesn't matter if it's Republicans or Democrats. It doesn't matter. In McDowell County, people face two choices. Stay and scrape by, or scrape together enough money to leave. Tabitha Collins is staying. You're 26 years old and you're raising four kids. That's a lot of responsibility. It's a lot. I don't know how I get through it, but I do. I just want to live the dream like anyone else does. Have a family, have a home, and not stress about the hardships that we have around here.

15:08Parishers have told you that they feel like they're tired of living in what feels like a third world country. That's a direct quote. What do you say to someone who says that to you? Amen. Amen, because I'm tired of it, too. It's gone on long enough.

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15:47Cecilia Vega:In November, President Trump announced he would, quote, permanently pause migration from all third world countries to the U.S. after a member of the National Guard was killed and another badly wounded in Washington, allegedly by an Afghan refugee. But there is one group of refugees that Trump administration is welcoming. It's expediting the resettlement of white South Africans, mostly Afrikaners who are descendants of Dutch settlers. President Trump says that white farmers are victims of a genocide. The South African government disputes that. We went to South Africa to see for ourselves. In the rolling hills of KwaZulu-Natal province in the southeast of South Africa, we met Daryl Brown, a seventh-generation rancher and farmer.

16:35Cecilia Vega:Did you grow up knowing you would be a farmer? It was always in my blood. It's a calling. But that calling has often come with risks. Ten years ago, his 82-year-old father was brutally attacked on the farm by robbers looking for guns and money. Then, in 2020, Brown's friends, Glenn and Vida Rafferty, were murdered in a robbery on their farm nearby. Your father was attacked. You've had friends murdered. Do you live in fear? I certainly live carefully. We're aware of what's happening around us. We don't take silly chances. We came to Daryl Brown's farm because of what President Trump said last May about the murders of South African farmers.

17:18It's a genocide that's taking place that you people don't want to write about, but it's a terrible thing that's taking place. and farmers are being killed. They happen to be white.

17:30Cecilia Vega:Nine days later, South Africa's president, Cyril Ramaphosa, came to the White House. Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa and has also made claims of genocide, was there too. What happened next seemed to take Ramaphosa by surprise. Excuse me, turn the lights down. President Trump showed several videos, proof, the White House said, of the violence targeting white farmers. These are burial sites right here. Burial sites. Over a thousand of white farmers. We found the spot where those white crosses were once planted. It's a lonely, pothole road not far from Darrell Brown's ranch. It definitely wasn't a burial site.

18:17I mean, those crosses were there for less than 48 hours.

18:19Cecilia Vega:It was purely an avenue of crosses that we planted there in honor of commercial farmers in South Africa that had lost their lives. Brown knows about the crosses because he put them there on the day of his friends Glenn and Vita Rafferty's funeral. He keeps them locked in a shed. In 2024, he brought them out again for the funeral of his best friend, Toli Nell, who was also murdered on his farm. Tolly's wife, Renee, still lives there. Her husband was killed in front of her trying to fight off burglars. Her son, Tienes, was tied up while they stole cash and guns. No one has been arrested. My whole life has changed.

19:04I've got nothing to look forward to. Sorry.

19:10Cecilia Vega:Tienes now runs the farm. He carries a weapon with him almost all the time. The only time I don't have it on me is when I'm in the shower. Really? Because I don't ever want another situation to arise where I feel that I'm a victim. The Nels have hired private security guards and fortified their property with electric fences and cameras. Many in South Africa feel they can't rely on the country's ineffective and overwhelmed police to keep them safe. When you heard President Trump talk about a genocide, what did you think? Well, I just thought he was using the wrong word. In your opinion, it's not a genocide here?

19:50Not what I know as a genocide, not what I've heard of what a genocide is. I see our attack as an opportunistic attack. They knew there was money, they knew there were firearms.

20:03Cecilia Vega:Whites make up only about 7 % of the population of South Africa, but still own 72 % of all privately held agricultural land and many of the country's large commercial farms. But according to Wandili Salobo, a leading agricultural economist, the overwhelming number of farmers and those working on farms are black. The white farmers may have a bigger part of the proportion of income, but the vast majority of people operating the farms in South Africa are black. There is crime on farms. There are murders on farms. They affect black farmers as well as white farmers. They affect black farmers as well as white farmers and also farm workers who are largely black.

20:46Cecilia Vega:Niklal Azuma farmed this nine-acre plot for 20 years. He was used to having equipment stolen, but in 2024, a group of men shot at him and broke into his house. Did you think at the time they were going to kill you? 100 percent. 100 percent. After the attack, he decided to sell the farm. There are a lot of black farmers that are attacked, and their voices are not out. People don't pay attention. It's just another number, not a statistic. South Africa is one of the most dangerous countries in the world. The murder rate is seven times that of the United States, and the majority of victims and perpetrators are black.

21:28Cecilia Vega:According to police, more than 25 ,000 people were murdered here in 2024. It's estimated 37 of them were killed on farms. 37 out of 25 ,000. For us as farmers, that 37 is too much. Johan Koza is an Afrikaner who's head of South Africa's largest agricultural organization. It's actually not about white genocide. It's about criminality in South Africa. That's what's happening on farms. It's what's happening in streets in Johannesburg and other major cities. It's crime. It's crime. The fact that it happened on a farm doesn't make me special as a farmer. It's horrendous. Any murder is horrendous. South African police only began publishing the race of those murdered on farms under pressure last year.

22:14Cecilia Vega:In the first quarter of 2025, they reported six farm homicides. Five of the victims were black. Poverty is the biggest driver of crime in South Africa. And how do you solve that? South Africa remains one of the world's most economically unequal countries. 44 % of blacks here live in poverty, compared to 1 % of whites. Koza went to Washington last February to talk with administration officials about the economic problems here. He was surprised by what they focused on. They asked us about the white genocide. And the first thing I said is, Hermes Afrikaans is what you could get. I grew up Afrikaans, and I never witnessed that.

22:56Cecilia Vega:South Africa's 2.7 million Afrikaners descend from Dutch settlers who arrived on the continent 400 years ago. Every year, they celebrate their culture and language in the shadow of the Vortrecker monument, which was built as a symbol of Afrikaner nationalism. Millions of black South Africans were forcibly evicted from their land and lost their rights to it by law in 1913. When Afrikaners took power in 1948, they instituted apartheid, a brutal system of racial segregation and discrimination. Blacks had virtually no rights and laws restricted where they could live and work. That all changed in 1994 when black South Africans were allowed to vote and elected Nelson Mandela.

23:43God bless Africa

23:45Cecilia Vega:In the decades since, there has been progress A growing black middle class and a reduction in poverty But some controversial government efforts to redress inequalities Have been plagued by graft and cronyism We're here today to talk about South Africa White supremacists in the U.S. and elsewhere Have long portrayed Afrikaners as victims of discrimination And worse, genocide But those claims didn't go mainstream until 2018, when then Fox News host Tucker Carlson began alleging Afrikaner farmers were being killed and having their land seized. An embattled minority of farmers, mostly Afrikaans speaking, is being targeted in a wave of barbaric and horrifying murders.

24:32Cecilia Vega:President Trump then tagged Tucker Carlson in a tweet, saying there were large-scale killings of farmers in South Africa, and the government was now seizing land from white farmers. Are there large-scale killings of farmers, and is the government seizing land? It is not happening. Donald Trump was fed this information, this link farm murders, genocide. There is no such a thing. Max Dupree is a prominent Afrikaans journalist and former newspaper editor. Are you the victim of unjust discrimination? I've never been discriminated against. And I'm a loud-mouthed citizen because I'm a journalist. So I express myself very strongly, also against this inept, corrupt government.