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The truth about Trump’s white South African refugees

27 May 20250 comments

Human rights lawyers, immigration academics, civil rights activists and Democrat politicians have criticised President Trump for giving white Afrikaners from South Africa refugee status, while denying refuge to others.

Trump swept into office on a promise to overhaul the US immigration system, including suspending refugee admissions.

“The US lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation of refugees,” he said at the time.

Now he has given refugee status to white South Africans whom he says are victims of racial discrimination and genocide, while refusing entry to Afghans and people from a host of war-torn countries and authoritarian regimes.

The US Episcopal Church, a leading refugee settlement provider, is ending its nearly 40-year refugee resettlement partnership with the US government after refusing a Trump administration request to help resettle the South Africans.

The church cited its commitment to racial justice as a moral imperative in a letter sent to its members.

Episcopal Bishop Sean Rowe told the media that the administration’s request crossed a moral line, and that the church would not help while other refugee programs remain largely frozen by the White House.

Timothy Young, a spokesman for Global Refuge, a resettlement agency, told the US media that “thousands of refugees from across the globe remain stranded in limbo despite being fully vetted and approved for travel, including Afghan allies, religious minorities and other populations facing extreme violence and persecution.”

He said the fact that the Trump administration is bypassing those people in favour of white South Africans who have not met international criteria for refugee status lays bare the white nationalism at the heart of Trump’s immigration policy.

Earlier this year, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa introduced a new law to address land ownership disparities – which have left three-quarters of privately owned land in South Africa in the hands of the white minority – by making it easier for the state to expropriate land.

Ramaphosa has said the law does not amount to land confiscation, but creates a framework for fair redistribution by allowing authorities to take land in the public interest without compensation only in exceptional circumstances, like when the area is abandoned.

The law allows the government to seize land without compensation “when it is just and equitable and in the public interest”. White South Africans are 7 per cent of the country’s population, but own half of its farmland.

Shortly after the introduction of the law, Trump wrote on his social media platform: “South Africa is confiscating land and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY… the United States won’t stand for it, we will act”.

The claim that Afrikaners are being persecuted in their home country, and that they are being subjected to a “genocide”, has been circulating for many years even though it has been discredited.

Although white farmers have been attacked and killed, South Africa has one of the world’s highest murder rates, so this is an issue that affects all of its citizens, whatever their race.

Four centuries after the first group of Dutch settlers arrived in what is now South Africa, most Afrikaners regard themselves as fully African – as seen in the name – and no longer identify with their European roots.

The status of white South African farmers has long been a rallying cry on the right and far-right of American politics.

But despite numerous claims in the past of the systematic targeting of the country’s white Afrikaner minority group, local crime statistics figures paint a different picture.

South Africa does not release crime figures based on race, but the latest figures revealed that 6,953 people were murdered in the country between October and December 2024.

Of these, 12 were killed in farm attacks. Of the 12, one was a farmer, while five were farm dwellers and four were employees, who are likely to have been black.