First SA white Afrikaner refugees set to arrive in US next week

United States (US) President Donald Trump’s administration is set to bring the first group of white South Africans or Afrikaners it has classified as refugees to the US early next week.

In March, Trump set up a programme called “Mission South Africa” offering an expedited pathway to US citizenship for some South Africans, falsely claiming that the government was confiscating their land and calling their treatment in the country “terrible.”

Fleeing SA

According to Trump, “any farmer” who was “seeking to flee South Africa for reasons of safety” could apply to become a US citizen, rather than a refugee.

Although Trump halted virtually all other refugee admissions shortly after he took office in January, his administration hastily put together the “Mission South Africa” programme to allow South Africans who claim to be affected into the US, the New York Times reported.

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‘True state of SA’

President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya told The Citizen that during the call with Trump last month, Ramaphosa told the US president about the “true state of South Africa”.  

“During the call between President Ramaphosa and President Trump, President Ramaphosa affirmed the truthful nature of the state of our country. He further affirmed that the information President Trump had been given was completely false,” Magwenya said.

“Therefore, our position is that there are no South African citizens [who] can be classified as refugees to any part of the world, including the US.  On the contrary, South Africa has been and remains a home for refugees from all over the world, in particular refugees from parts of our continent embroiled in conflict.

“As we work to normalise relations with the US, we will remain firm on the proper characterisation of our country and the issues that we continue to grapple with and are tackling as an independent sovereign constitutional democracy,” Magwenya said.

In March, Afrikaner lobby groups Solidarity and AfriForum travelled to the United States and handed over the “Washington Memorandum”, asking the US to provide humanitarian assistance for Afrikaner development.

The organisations under the Solidarity Movement met with senior representatives of the Donald Trump administration at the White House.

Refugees

According to the New York Times report, refugees can often wait years in camps around the world before they are processed and approved to travel to the United States.

According to the American Immigration Council, an advocacy group for immigrants, refugee resettlement took an average of 18 to 24 months before the first Trump administration. Many refugees must wait years longer.

The Afrikaners, however, had to wait no more than three months.

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Screening Afrikaners

Within weeks of announcing that Afrikaners would be eligible for refugee status, the administration deployed teams to Pretoria to screen white South Africans for consideration, according to the documents obtained by The New York Times.

The teams studied more than 8,000 requests from people expressing interest in becoming refugees, and the U.S. government identified 100 Afrikaners who potentially could be approved.

The Trump administration plans to send government officials to Washington Dulles International Airport in Virginia for an event marking the arrival of the South Africans who belong to the white minority Afrikaner ethnic group, according to the memo from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Trump executive order

It initially planned to welcome the Afrikaners on Monday, but some officials familiar with the matter cautioned that the plans remained in flux, subject to flight logistics and processing of the group.

Trump signed an executive order in February halting federal aid to South Africa after President Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Act, which the US president said imposes “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaner farmers.

“To go a step further, any farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to citizenship. This process will begin immediately!” he wrote in a post on Truth Social.

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