On Monday the Trump administration welcomed a group of 59 white South Africans as refugees, saying they face discrimination and violence at home. Many in the group from South Africa — including toddlers and other small children, even one walking barefoot in pajamas — held small American flags as two officials welcomed them to the United States in an airport hangar outside Washington.
The South Africans were then leaving on other flights to various U.S. destinations.
A group of 49 Afrikaners had been expected, but the State Department reported that 59 had arrived. Trump told reporters earlier Monday that he's admitting them as refugees because of the "genocide that's taking place." He said that in post-apartheid South Africa, white farmers are "being killed."
South Africa held its first Democratic elections in 1994. All can cast a vote, but economic inequality remains a national concern, and farmers are targeted.
Julius Malema (shown top in red beret), leader of the leftist Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), brought hard feelings to the surface in late March and in subsequent rallies when he chants the controversial political slogan “kill the Boer, kill the farmer.”
The phrase comes from an anti-apartheid song that gained prominence during the struggle against the former apartheid government, which was dominated by “Afrikaners,” the descendants of Dutch, German and French settlers in South Africa.
Malema shouts, and thousands respond in kind. And he shouts with a legal win in his back pocket.
Equality Court justice Edwin Molahleli in 2022 ruled that he found no evidence to link the chanting of the slogan with attacks or murders of farmers reports Independent Online, one of South Africa’s leading news outlets.
Church leader describes fears
So, what is the reality in modern-day South Africa?
Church pastor Vincent Mathews, who is black, led a Johannesburg congregation for 12 years. He tells AFN it is true South Africa's black leaders looked the other way for many years while blacks avenged the past by murdering white farmers. There are fewer killings now, he says, but the anger and the fear have not gone away.
In news stories reviewed by AFN, claims and counter-claims of a white "genocide" have been hotly contested for many years. A recent news story, published in March, cited an annual average of 50 murders of white farmers in 2022 and in 2023.
Those figures, from a fact-checking article by AFP, come from two South African groups whose members are white. One group is a union of white farmers and the second group is a minority rights organization.
"There is a challenge and discrimination that many, especially in rural areas, are feeling," Mathews tells AFN. "Many have been afraid, and they've had family members who have been killed."
Mathews, who now leads a multi-state church ministry based in Mississippi, is an ambassador for Project 21.
A related fear of modern-day white South Africans is a national law that allows the federal government to seize land from white land owners without compensation. That bill, the Expropriation Act, was signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa in January, the BBC reported.
The new law replaced a previous law, from 1975, that required the government to pay land owners if it wants to obtain their property.
Ira Mehlman is media director for the Federation for American Immigration Reform.
“The fact is that the President does have the authority to set refugee admission policies. This is within his power as the President, and he has decided to do so. But beyond that, obviously there are policies in South Africa where they have displaced these Afrikaner farmers from their land."
Trump says he plans to address the issue with South African leadership next week.
