❓WHAT HAPPENED: The South African government criticised the Trump administration’s decision to prioritize refugee applications from white Afrikaners, denying that the country is at risk of a “white genocide.”
👤WHO WAS INVOLVED: President Donald J. Trump, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, and Afrikaners.
📍WHEN & WHERE: The announcement was made on October 30, with earlier discussions in May during a meeting in the Oval Office.
🎯IMPACT: The U.S. refugee cap has been reduced to its lowest level on record, with most places expected to go to white South African Afrikaners.
The South African government has condemned the Trump administration’s decision to prioritize refugee applications from white Afrikaners, dismissing claims of a “white genocide.” Officials in Pretoria claim that South Africa’s crime statistics do not show white citizens being disproportionately targeted—although South African statistics intentionally obscure the racial background of criminals and their victims—and branded the U.S. policy politically motivated and racially divisive.
The criticism follows an announcement by the Trump administration setting America’s annual refugee cap at 7,500, the lowest on record, and indicating that most of those places will likely go to Afrikaners. President Donald J. Trump had previously offered refugee status to Afrikaners after South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a law permitting the expropriation of land without compensation, widely perceived as an attempt to dispossess Afrikaner farmers.
In a tense Oval Office meeting earlier this year, Trump confronted Ramaphosa, noting that white farmers were being killed and persecuted. Trump’s State Department has accused South African authorities of failing to prevent farm murders and alleged “extrajudicial killings” of white landowners, claims that South African officials claim are politically motivated.
South Africa’s ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, was expelled after criticising Trump’s remarks. Rasool accused the U.S. president of “mobilising a supremacism” and “projecting white victimhood,” while the South African government insisted that violent crime affects all racial groups.
Despite U.S. claims of “systemic violence against white farmers,” Ramaphosa denounced Afrikaners who accepted U.S. asylum, calling them “cowards” for fleeing persecution.
Notably, Julius Malema, who leads the fourth-largest party in South Africa’s multi-party legislature, has led packed stadiums in chants of “Kill the Boer (Afrikaner), the farmer,” and warned he is “not calling for the slaughtering of white people, at least for now,” and stressing that he will not rule out doing so in the future.
The “Kill the Boer” slogan has been found at the scene of farm murders.
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