President Trump accused South Africa Monday of engaging in “genocide” against its white minority as the first planeload of Afrikaners granted refugee status touched down in the US.
“It is a genocide that is taking place that you people don’t want to write about,” Trump told reporters at the White House before signing an executive order meant to reduce drug prices.
“It’s a terrible thing that’s taking place and farmers are being killed,” he added. “They happen to be white, but whether they are white or black makes no difference to me.”
Trump signed an executive order Feb. 7 freezing aid to South Africa in response to a law passed last year allowing the majority black government to “seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation,” in the words of the White House.
Exactly a month later, the president announced that “any farmer” fleeing South Africa can come to America and receive a “rapid pathway” to citizenship.
On Monday, 49 Afrikaners, descendants of primarily Dutch settlers who arrived at the southern tip of Africa in the mid-1600s, landed at Dulles International Airport in northern Virginia.
The US gave South Africa more than $320 million in fiscal year 2024, mostly for health and humanitarian aid.
The Expropriation Act of 2024 was enacted following a 2017 study that found white South Africans controlled about 75% of individually-owned farms more than two decades after the end of apartheid — despite making up just 7% of South Africa’s population.
“It is most regrettable that it appears that the resettlement of South Africans to the United States under the guise of being ‘refugees’ is entirely politically motivated and designed to question South Africa’s constitutional democracy,” foreign ministry spokesperson Chrispin Phiri said in a statement.
Meanwhile, the presiding bishop of the Episcopal Church announced Monday that the mainline Protestant denomination would no longer work with the federal government to resettle refugees after being asked to help find new homes for the South Africans.
“In light of our church’s steadfast commitment to racial justice and reconciliation and our historic ties with the Anglican Church of Southern Africa, we are not able to take this step,” wrote the Most Rev. Sean Rowe. ” … It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years. I am saddened and ashamed that many of the refugees who are being denied entrance to the United States are brave people who worked alongside our military in Iraq and Afghanistan and now face danger at home because of their service to our country.
“I also grieve,” Rowe added, “that victims of religious persecution, including Christians, have not been granted refuge in recent months.”
South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola has compared the Expropriation Act to the practice of eminent domain in America. But the Trump administration is standing by their criticisms.
“Afrikaners fleeing persecution are welcome in the United States,” Secretary of State Marco Rubio said on X Monday.
“The South African government has treated these people terribly — threatening to steal their private land and subjected them to vile racial discrimination. The Trump Administration is proud to offer them refuge in our great country.”
Trump adviser Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa and lived there for the first 18 years of his life, has repeatedly criticized the government in recent months, stating on March 4 that “what’s happening in South Africa is deeply wrong. Not what [late former President Nelson] Mandela intended at all.”
