WASHINGTON, May 13 (NNN-AGENCIES) — The first group of white South Africans granted refugee status by Donald Trump’s administration has arrived in the US, stirring controversy in South Africa as the US president declared the Afrikaners victims of a “genocide”.
The Afrikaners, a minority descended from mainly Dutch colonists, were met at Dulles international airport outside Washington DC by US deputy secretary of state, Christopher Landau, and deputy secretary of homeland security, Troy Edgar, with many given US flags to wave.
The group numbered 59 adults and children, citing a state department official.
At Dulles airport, Landau told the assembled white South Africans: “It is such an honour for us to receive you here today … it makes me so happy to see you with our flag in your hands.
He invoked his family’s history, saying: “My own father was born in Europe and had to leave his country when Hitler came in … We respect what you have had to deal with these last few years.”
He added: “We’re sending a clear message that the United States really rejects the egregious persecution of people on the basis of race in South Africa.”
On the same day the group arrived in the US, Trump’s government also ended legal protections that had temporarily protected Afghans from deportation, citing an improved security situation in the country, which is ruled by the Taliban.
One consideration for resettling Afrikaners not Afghans was that “they could be easily assimilated into our country,” Landau told reporters at the airport.
Trump suspended the US refugee settlement programme in January, leaving more than 100,000 people approved for refugee resettlement stranded. Then, in February, he signed an executive order directing officials to grant refugee status to Afrikaners, whose leaders ruled during apartheid while violently repressing the Black majority.
“It’s a genocide that’s taking place,” Trump told reporters at the White House, when asked why white South Africans were being prioritised for resettlement above victims of famine and war elsewhere on the continent, echoing a far-right conspiracy theory that has also been amplified by his South African-born billionaire adviser Elon Musk.
Trump added that the Afrikaners’ race “makes no difference to me”. He said South Africa’s leaders were travelling to meet him next week, but that he would not attend the G20 leaders’ meeting in Johannesburg in November unless the “situation is taken care of”. — NNN-AGENCIES
