Below the second Trump administration, there’s one group of individuals getting expedited entry to refugee standing and resettlement within the US.
It’s not residents of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the place 6.1 million individuals have been internally displaced attributable to a long time of preventing amongst armed teams and widespread gender-based violence. The US just isn’t at the moment accepting extra DRC residents as refugees underneath President Donald Trump.
It’s not Afghan residents both, regardless of the continued human rights violations, particularly towards ladies and ladies, perpetrated by the Taliban after the US withdrawal from the nation in 2021. As a substitute, the Trump administration is now revoking non permanent protections for a lot of Afghans already in America, which may outcome of their deportation again to Afghanistan.
And it’s not the Sudanese individuals, of whom almost 8.6 million have been internally displaced amid a battle between navy and paramilitary forces.
A subset of white South Africans, referred to as Afrikaners, are the one individuals Trump has newly admitted to the US as refugees. Trump has described them, with out proof, as victims of a “genocide that’s going down” and anti-white discrimination, echoing rhetoric that has lengthy circulated on the far proper. And he’s sought to punish South Africa for that by reducing off US support.
(The US authorities should admit some refugees from different international locations who had been already within the resettlement pipeline earlier than Trump took workplace, per a courtroom order issued in late March after the president tried to droop nearly all refugee admissions. However that court-ordered acceptance is a pointy distinction from the administration’s enthusiastic outreach to Afrikaners.)
Trump’s effort to label Afrikaners “refugees” relies on doubtful pretenses. The South African authorities and even some white South Africans argue that, after the top of the apartheid system, which supported white minority rule in South Africa till the early Nineties, white individuals stay a privileged class. The standard Black family has 5 % of the wealth of the everyday white family. And police information doesn’t present that Afrikaners, lots of whom are farmers, undergo from disproportionate ranges of violence that may quantity to genocide.
As a small minority of the inhabitants, white individuals nonetheless personal a majority of the nation’s land. That hasn’t stopped Elon Musk from criticizing the nation’s land possession legal guidelines as “racist” towards white individuals following the signing of a land reform invoice earlier this 12 months.
The legislation permits the federal government to grab property with out compensation solely in restricted circumstances, together with when the land just isn’t in use or has been deserted and if the proprietor is merely holding it as an funding within the hope that it’s going to admire in worth. Afrikaner farmers have argued that the legislation might be used to grab their land towards their will, however the authorities has contested that declare, and there’s no proof that that is occurring.
As a substitute, the proof suggests Trump is selectively plucking a white minority for resettlement, at the same time as nonwhite individuals dealing with warfare and famine all over the world have been shut out from safety within the US.
On Monday, the primary group of those Afrikaners, 49 individuals in whole, arrived within the US, the place they are going to be supplied a “fast pathway” to US citizenship and obtain help from a refugee workplace inside the Division of Well being and Human Providers.
To study extra in regards to the impetus behind Trump’s determination, in addition to in regards to the scenario in South Africa, I spoke with Jacob S. Dlamini, a Princeton College historical past professor whose analysis has targeted on South African apartheid. Our dialog has been edited for size and readability.
Do white Afrikaners have a respectable declare to refugee standing?
I grew up underneath apartheid, actually underneath indicators that mentioned, “Whites solely.” White boys chased Black of us for sport after I was rising up. This looks like an actual kick within the intestine.
There isn’t any substance to the declare that Afrikaners as a bunch have been persecuted. These should not refugees by any stretch of the creativeness. They’re individuals who merely don’t need to stay underneath majority-Black rule.
A few of them will speak about crime. I come from a household of small enterprise homeowners who’ve suffered due to crime. I’ve misplaced associates to crime. I’ve misplaced relations to crime. Impartial stats present that whites as a bunch are not disproportionately focused. If something, it’s poor individuals who bear the brunt of South Africa’s crime drawback — and it’s a significant issue.
In his government order granting refugee standing to white Afrikaners, Trump referenced the South African authorities’s current land reform invoice, which he claims permits the seizure of “ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property with out compensation” and is “fueling disproportionate violence towards racially disfavored landowners.” Does that sq. with the truth in South Africa?
The very first piece of laws that Nelson Mandela signed into legislation when he grew to become president in Might of 1994 was a land reform invoice whose job was to right what is actually South Africa’s unique political sin, and that was the taking away of land from indigenous peoples and allocating it to white South Africans for unique possession. For the previous 30 years, the federal government has truly failed spectacularly on that entrance. That failure helps clarify why in the present day, in Might 2025, whites nonetheless personal greater than 70 % of farmland in South Africa. [Editor’s note: Only 7 percent of the country’s population is white.]
Actually, as white farmers themselves have been mentioning ever since Trump introduced his plans to do that, no single white farmer has had land taken away from him, and there’s no suggestion that that’s going to alter anytime quickly.
Do you suppose Trump’s coverage is proof of Elon Musk’s affect on this administration?
Musk just isn’t the one South African who’s obtained Trump’s ear. There’s an entire cohort of white males who grew up, for a few of their lives, underneath apartheid in South Africa. That’s vital.
The error that the media within the US has been making has been to deal with Musk and to imagine that all of it radiates from him to Trump. Actually, there’s this complete cohort of white males who’ve but to come back to phrases with democracy in South Africa, which means {that a} poor Black one that has no prospects in life has as a lot say politically in terms of elections as does a really wealthy white particular person. That’s what it comes right down to.
They’ve misplaced their energy, which isn’t the identical factor as privilege. For instance, it’s nonetheless the case that while you take a look at company South Africa, 62.1 % of company leaders are white, and most of these are males. Solely 17.2 % are so-called Black African. And that’s 30 years for the reason that introduction of democracy.
What do Trump’s insurance policies imply for the South African authorities?
They’re in for 4 years of hell with Trump. However additionally it is, I’m hoping, a wake-up name for the present [African National Congress] authorities to take South Africa’s poor rather more severely. The incompetence and the corruption of the previous 30 years have, in some methods, pushed the ANC off the upper ethical floor that it occupied when Mandela was president.
Trump’s determination to deal with the chief beneficiaries of apartheid as victims of a genocide going down solely in his head offers the ANC an opportunity to get again on that ethical excessive floor by reminding the world simply how prison apartheid was.
The one greatest mistake that the ANC made in the mean time of transition in 1994 was to imagine that every one that you just wanted to do to right the injustices of apartheid was to create a Black capitalist class. All that this did was create this huge patronage system that had authorities contracts at its heart. This made the Black bourgeoisie depending on authorities enterprise and inspired corruption.
Trying again over the past 30 years, we are able to see that considering that you possibly can use authorities contracts to create a Black enterprise class was only a horrible concept. Paradoxically, the ANC copied the thought from successive apartheid governments, which used authorities patronage to construct an Afrikaner enterprise class. There’s not a single Afrikaner [billionaire in US dollars] in South Africa in the present day who didn’t get their begin on the again of apartheid authorities contracts.
Corruption is endemic, and it’s an enormous drawback. After all, the factor about corruption in South Africa that we neglect is that it’s non-racial, it cuts throughout racial strains. Since you want these cross-cultural and racial networks to maneuver cash round, to launder cash. It’s a nationwide enterprise.
Who has suffered due to the incompetence and the corruption? It’s all South Africans, particularly the poor. White Afrikaners as a bunch haven’t suffered completely.
How ought to we take into consideration Trump’s determination to welcome white Afrikaners as refugees within the context of his gutting of US refugee admissions broadly?
It’s bitterly ironic that he has stopped the processing of refugee functions for everybody besides this group of privileged white South Africans.
Marco Rubio kicked out South Africa’s ambassador to the US for mentioning the premise of Trump’s animus towards South Africa, however there isn’t a mistaking the white supremacist underpinnings of this. There isn’t any mistaking the crude racism on the coronary heart of this. You’ve right here an administration that has and is punishing individuals who really want all the assistance they will get, who’re coming right here or are right here for higher alternatives for his or her children and for themselves, however it’s going to cease at nothing to take this very privileged group of white South Africans and switch them into refugees, when, the truth is, they’re something however refugees.
I grew up underneath apartheid. My mom went to her grave with out having voted within the nation of her beginning. I grew up preventing the system.
I now discover myself in 2025 having to relitigate whether or not apartheid was improper. That’s what this quantities to: taking individuals who benefited and proceed to profit from this terrible system known as apartheid and turning them into victims and refugees. What Trump is speaking is that apartheid was proper. That’s morally repugnant and simply plain obscene.
