White South Africans arrive in US under Trump refugee scheme

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A small group of white South Africans arrived in the US on Monday as refugees under Donald Trump’s push to resettle the “victims of unjust racial discrimination”, even as his administration imposes a hard line on asylum seekers from other countries.

Forty-nine Afrikaners, the first to take up the controversial offer made by the US president in January, landed at Washington’s Dulles International Airport after leaving Johannesburg the previous day on a privately chartered aircraft.

The group, many of whom waved miniature American flags, was greeted by deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, and deputy secretary of homeland security, Troy Edgar.

“We’re sending a clear message that the United States really rejects the egregious persecution of people on the basis of race in South Africa and we welcome these people to the United States and to a new future,” said Landau.

Trump and his South African-born adviser Elon Musk have seized on fringe allegations that Afrikaners have been oppressed under the democratic, multiracial government that began in 1994 after decades of white nationalist rule.

The asylum offer has hit a nerve in South Africa, whose government has repeatedly clashed with the Trump administration. The US president has accused the country, Africa’s biggest economy, of taking “aggressive positions” against the US and its allies, including by accusing Israel of genocide in The Hague.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa said those on the flight had not been persecuted.

“They are not being hounded, they are not being treated badly and they are leaving ostensibly because they don’t want to embrace the changes that are taking place in our country,” he said on Monday. 

White South Africans remain by far the country’s most privileged group in metrics ranging from employment levels to wealth and land ownership. Afrikaners, who constitute about 5 per cent of the population, had led the apartheid regime.

Trump says they face discrimination in the form of laws intended to empower the Black majority by offering them preferential access to government contracts.

Laundau on Monday alleged that many members of the group had “faced the threat not only of expropriation but also of direct violence” as well as “invasions” of their homes and farms.

“It is not surprising, unfortunately, that a country from which refugees come does not concede that they are refugees and unfortunately the South African government has not done what we feel is appropriate to guarantee the rights of these citizens to live in peace with their fellow South Africans,” he added.

Speaking in the Oval Office earlier on Monday, Trump said he created an expedited path into the US for Afrikaners at a time when other refugee programmes were being halted, “because they are being killed”.

“It’s a genocide that’s taking place,” he told reporters, repeating a debunked claim.

He also claimed that many were being evicted from their farms. “White farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa”. While South Africa’s government passed the Land Expropriation Act last year, no farms have been seized.

Trump added the refugees would get “expedited citizenship” without providing any details. But the US embassy in South Africa said people can apply for a green card one year after arriving as part of the United States Refugee Admissions Program, and then citizenship five years after that.

The US president said he planned to meet with South Africa’s leadership next week, a meeting at which Ramaphosa said they would discuss the refugees. 

While Trump said white farmers were being disproportionately attacked on the country’s farms, Ronald Lamola, the foreign minister, said it was disinformation to suggest any one ethnic group has been targeted. Those departing did not legally qualify as refugees, he argued.

“They can’t provide any proof of any persecution, because there is none,” he said, adding that even Afrikaner groups had denied it was taking place.

The Transvaal Agricultural Union’s figures show farm murders have fallen in recent years, from a peak in the early 2000s. There were 32 murders and 139 attacks on farms last year — roughly a third of the 2017 level — against both Black and white people, the data shows.

Last month, US State department officials began turning empty office space in the capital of Pretoria into temporary housing for Afrikaners it deemed to be refugees.

The US has threatened to boycott the G20 summit due to be held in South Africa in November, but Ramaphosa said he hoped they could patch up relations before then. “There’s still a long way to go,” he said.