The first group of white South Afrikaners granted refugee status by President Donald Trump arrived in America in May after Trump declared South Africa’s minority group was victims of a “genocide.”
On February 7, President Donald Trump signed an executive order that offered asylum to Afrikaners and cut aid to South Africa. Trump’s executive order came just over two weeks after South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Act into law. He signed the law to address the lingering effects of the segregationist system of apartheid in 1948.
The legislation replaces the pre-democratic Expropriation Act of 1975. Under the previous law, the government was obligated to pay owners if it wanted to take land under the premise of “willing seller, willing buyer,” the BBC reports. However, the new law grants the government the power to redistribute land without compensation where it is “just and equitable in the public interest to do so.”
Ramaphosa’s decision was met with mixed reactions worldwide, including from then-adviser to Trump, Elon Musk. Musk, who was born and raised in South Africa but does not identify as an Afrikaner, said on X, “Very few people know that there is a major political party in South Africa that is actively promoting white genocide.”
The party in question is the Economic Freedom Fighters. It’s the fourth largest in parliament and a political opponent of President Ramaphosa’s African National Congress. Economic Freedom Fighters won 9.5% of the vote in last year’s national elections. The party has faced scrutiny for previously fueling racial tensions.
Ramaphosa denied allegations by Trump, Musk, and others that South Africa is deliberately mistreating Afrikaners with violent attacks on their farms and seizing their land. He doubled down, stating the false information about white South Africans being discriminated against is from people who disagree with the government’s efforts to address the racial inequality that has persisted over 30 years after the end of apartheid.
Who Are White South Afrikaners?
Those who make up the minority Afrikaner community are the descendants of mainly Dutch and French colonial settlers who formed the segregationist system of apartheid in 1948. Under apartheid, the white minority government, primarily composed of Afrikaners, was legally able to seize land and resources from the majority Black population. Black South Africans were forcibly relocated to and lived in designated areas called Bantustans, or “homelands,” which were essentially segregated ethnic reserves.
Apartheid ended in 1994 when the African National Congress (ANC) party won the first racially inclusive democratic elections in South Africa. However, the legacy and impact of apartheid continue. Black people often face challenges in accessing land, resources, and opportunities.
White South Africans have 20 times the wealth of Black South Africans, according to the Review of Political Economy. The Black South African unemployment rate is 46.1%, compared with 9.2% for white people. Data also shows that 73% of privately owned land in South Africa is white-owned. White people only make up 7% of the population. In the corporate world, over 60% of top management positions are occupied by white people compared to 17% of Black South Africans.
Afrikaners are still doing better than Black South Africans. Yet, that hasn’t stopped many of them from making claims that they are living in an oppressed system in South Africa, prompting many of them to seek asylum in the United States.
Righting A Wrong In South Africa After Apartheid
President Ramaphosa has defended the Expropriation Act, insisting that it’s a framework for fair and lawful land redistribution.
Vincent Magwenya, President Ramaphosa’s spokesperson, said that the government “may not expropriate property arbitrarily or for a purpose other than […] in the public interest.” He added that expropriation would only be carried out when there hasn’t been success in reaching an agreement with the owner.
Supporters say the act is a crucial step in fulfilling the promise of economic emancipation that came at the end of apartheid.
“The idea is that our freedom was not complete in 1994 because the promise of economic emancipation was not fulfilled,” Legal Expert Tembeka Ngcukaitobi told Reuters.
But opponents, mainly landowners, expressed concerns that the legislation would lead to land grabs and threaten fundamental property rights. AfriForum is a group that has been outspoken in its disapproval of Ramaphosa. The group calls itself the largest civil rights body in the Southern Hemisphere. The Southern Poverty Law Center, however, calls its leaders “white supremacists in suits and ties.”
AfriForum has lobbied U.S. politicians for support against what it has called threats against the Afrikaner minority by the majority Black government. In 2018, Trump tweeted unfounded claims that South Africans were under siege, along with concerns of land seizures and the murders of farmers in South Africa. Trump’s actions only reinforced the group’s claims of oppression.
Research from multiple sources reveals that while attacks on farm owners are often white, they’re generally motivated by opportunistic crimes such as burglaries. These incidents account for a relatively small percentage of the country’s total murder rate.
As the BBC points out, none of South Africa’s political parties, including those that represent Afrikaners and the white community, have claimed that there is a genocide in South Africa. Meanwhile, AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel urges Afrikaners not to move elsewhere.
“We don’t want to move elsewhere, and we are not going to ask our children now to move to another country,” said Kriel. “We have an interest in future generations and to make sure our culture is passed down to future generations. That cannot be done abroad.”
