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Like the first batch, who relocated to the US in early May, they claim to be persecuted in their home country. The group is part of some 8,000 Afrikaners who will reportedly be resettled in the US over the next few months.
A second and much smaller group of white Afrikaner South Africans arrived quietly in the United States on Friday without any fanfare. They left the country on a commercial flight from Johannesburg.
Like the first batch, who relocated to the US in early May, they claim to be persecuted in their home country. The group is part of some 8,000 Afrikaners who will reportedly be resettled in the US over the next few months.
Controversially, they have been granted fast-tracked “refugee status” by President Donald TrumpHe has falsely claimed they are the victims of a “genocide”.
In February, he signed an executive order halting all aid to South Africa, accusing the government of doing “terrible things” to Afrikaners. He described them as the victims of “unjust racial discrimination,” saying their land was being taken away from them.
Trump’s view appears to stem from a recent law that allows land expropriation without compensation in extremely rare cases. South African officials say the policy is part of efforts to address land-ownership disparities that are one of the starkest legacies of apartheid.
Three-quarters of the country’s private land is still white-owned, and not a single expropriation has taken place. The minority Afrikaner ethnic group are mostly descended from Dutch colonialists and has a long history in the agricultural sector. They make up 60 per cent of the country’s white minority, which constitutes 7.2 per cent of the population.
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South Africa has repeatedly rejected the US president’s claims. The country’s President Cyril Ramaphosa reiterated the government’s position during his visit to the US.
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