Cruelly ironic, distasteful and unbelievable
Trump suspended the US refugee settlement programme in January, leaving more than 100,000 genuine refugees approved for refugee resettlement stranded. Then, in February, he signed an executive order directing officials to grant refugee status to Afrikaners, whose leaders ruled South Africa during the apartheid era which lasted for over 40 years. A period when the Black majority population was violently repressed, disenfranchised and denied fundamental human rights. It is therefore cruelly ironic, distasteful and unbelievable to see the beneficiaries of the Apartheid era arriving in the US on Monday this week being treated as victims of persecution in need of sanctuary in the USA.
Note the following:
- White South Africans typically have 20 times the wealth of Black people, according to an article in the Review of Political Economy. The Black South African unemployment rate is 46.1%, compared with 9.2% for White people.
- Whites, who make up 7.3% of the population, still own two-thirds of farmland.
- Poorer Black people are disproportionately at risk of violence (https://journals.assaf.org.za/index.php/sacq/article/view/897).
- Recent research (https://www.dailymaverick.co.za/article/2022-10-25-nechama-brodie-challenges-myths-of-the-white-genocide-in-her-book-farm-killings-in-south-africa/) suggests that farm murders have a disproportionate presence in media coverage of violent crime. News outlets have a general tendency to overreport violence that happens to wealthy and White people in contrast to other South Africans, whose experiences of violence tend to be treated as newsworthy only if they are particularly spectacular.
- Refugee: “A person who has been forced to leave his or her country due to persecution, war or violence.”
A couple of News articles have really summed it up nicely. The Guardian’s article is more of a summary (https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/may/12/white-south-africans-trump),whereas the Newsweek article gives a really good feel of what is happening on the ground in the US (https://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-white-refugeees-south-africa-2070997).
Lastly, it is important to not generalise and hold all Afrikaners responsible for Apartheid and its terrible and enduring legacy on South Africa’s majority population. However, the notion that of all the people in the world who need to be fast tracked above those trapped in war torn countries, are Afrikaners arriving from South Africa, is clearly ridiculous and brings the Trump administration’s morality further into disrepute.
