White South Africans fast-tracked for refugee status arrive in U.S.
Afrikaners welcomed by Trump administration, which is angered by South Africa land reform law
The Trump administration on Monday welcomed a group of 59 white South Africans as refugees, saying they face discrimination and violence at home, which the country's government strongly denies.
The decision to admit the Afrikaners also has raised questions from refugee advocates about why they were admitted when the Trump administration has suspended efforts to resettle people fleeing war and persecution who have gone through years of vetting.
Many in the group from South Africa — including toddlers and other small children, even one walking barefoot in pyjamas — held small American flags as two officials welcomed them to the United States in an airport hangar outside Washington. The South Africans then left on other flights to various U.S. destinations.
A group of 49 had been expected, but the U.S. State Department said Monday that 59 had arrived.
"I want you all to know that you are really welcome here and that we respect what you have had to deal with these last few years," U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau said.
They are the first Afrikaners — a white minority group in South Africa — to be relocated after Trump issued an executive order on Feb. 7 accusing South Africa's Black-led government of racial discrimination against them and announcing a program to offer them relocation to America.
The administration says the South African government is pursuing racist, anti-white policies through affirmative action laws targeting Afrikaners' land through a new law signed by President Cyril Ramaphosa this year that could theoretically expropriate land from some farmers without compensation.
Three-quarters of South Africa's private land is still white-owned and not a single expropriation has taken place, however. The Democratic Alliance, one of several government coalition partners, has challenged the legality of the new law in court.
U.S. President Donald Trump first railed about land being taken away from white farmers during his first presidency in 2018, when an update to South Africa's apartheid-era laws concerning land reform was only being considered.
'Economically privileged'
The South African government said Afrikaners — who are the descendants of Dutch and French colonial settlers — are "amongst the most economically privileged" in the country. There are around 2.7 million Afrikaners among South Africa's population of 62 million, which is more than 80 per cent Black.
They are only one part of the country's white minority, but the Trump administration refugee program only offers relocation to Afrikaners, who are largely seen as holding conservative and Christian values that might align with the politics of the Trump administration.
The average white household in South Africa owns 20 times the wealth of the average Black household, according to the Review of Political Economy, an international academic journal.
The unemployment rate for Black South Africans in the fourth quarter of 2024 was 35.8 per cent, compared to 6.7 per cent for white South Africans, and 14 per cent for those demographically considered Indian or Asian. In North West province, which is more than 90 per cent black, the unemployment rate was highest in the country, at 41 per cent.
"A refugee is someone who has to leave their country out of fear of political persecution, religious persecution or economic persecution and they don't fit that bill, they don't fit that description," Ramaphosa said Monday while attending the Africa CEO Forum in Ivory Coast.
Trump insists race not a factor
Trump and his South Africa-born adviser Elon Musk also claim that Afrikaners are being targeted in racially motivated attacks in some rural communities.
"It's a genocide that's taking place that you people don't want to write about," Trump said Monday at the White House to a group of reporters.
That contentious claim of a white genocide has been rejected by a judge who characterized it as "clearly imagined," in one high-profile case, and violent crime statistics nationally also don't offer supporting evidence.
There were 49 farm homicides in 2023, according to AfriForum, and Afrikaner group that records farm attacks. That number is actually down from 2013 to 2017, when between 62 and 72 such homicides were noted each year.
The country's police minister has disputed the AfriForum tally overall, saying it doesn't correlate with information the federal government has received from police departments. He also suggested the total includes homicides of farm workers, who are often Black.
South Africa is plagued by deadly violence overall, with more than 23,000 homicides annually the past four years, and given the country's demographics and poverty statistics, a significant percentage of victims are Black.
"The idea of white victimhood suggests that bad things happening to white people are infinitely worse than the same things happening to anybody else," said Nicky Falkof, head of the Centre for Diversity Studies at the University of Witwatersrand, told Reuters recently. "So when crime happens to white people, it's not simply crime, it's a targeted racial genocide."
Trump insisted whether it was white or black farmers, "it makes me no difference to me, but white farmers are being brutally killed, and their land is being confiscated."
Case against Israel another sticking point
The new U.S. administration within days criticized the South African government, and Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced he wouldn't attend a G20 meeting of foreign ministers in Johannesburg in February.
That city hosts the G20 summit in November.
In addition to its position on the rural land law, the U.S. administration has been angered by South Africa lodging a genocide case against U.S. ally Israel over the conduct of its military campaign in Gaza, which was precipitated by attacks led by militant group Hamas on Oct. 7, 2023.
The South African government said though there was no justification for them being relocated, it respected their freedom of choice and couldn't stop them.
In 2018, Australia's then-conservative government also considered fast-tracking Afrikaner farmers, sparking a diplomatic spat with South Africa. The plan never came to fruition.
With files from CBC News and Reuters