Second group of white Afrikaners arrive in the US to take up Trump's offer of resettlement
The second batch of Afrikaner refugees arrived in the US on Friday. Pictured are US President Donald Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office of the White House in Washington, DC, during a meeting which aimed to clear misinformation about genocide claims.
Image: Jim WATSON / AFP
A small batch of white Afrikaners quietly arrived in the US on Friday, as part of President Donald Trump's offer to resettle them amidst false claims of white genocide and persecution in South Africa.
They are part of 8,000 who will be resettled within the next few months, according to Jaco Kleynhans, head of Public Relations for trade union Solidarity.
Last month the first group of more than 49 white South African Afrikaners landed in the United States after a private plane was chartered for them.
This after Trump in February issued an executive order where Washington cited the Expropriation Act 13 of 2024 as one that enables the persecution of Afrikaners.
Kleynhans said the second group departed on a commercial flight on Thursday that landed in Atlanta in the US on Friday.
'It is a smaller group, including children. Several more groups will fly to the USA over the next few weeks. The US Embassy in Pretoria, in collaboration with the State Department in Washington DC, is currently processing 8,000 applications, and we expect many more Afrikaner refugees to travel to the USA over the next few months.
"They are settling in states across the USA, but particularly southern states such as Texas, North and South Carolina, Kansas, Oklahoma, and Nebraska,' Kleynhans said.
Reports indicate that the US embassy in South Africa is aware that 'refugees continue to arrive in the United States from South Africa on commercial flights as part of the Afrikaner resettlement programme's ongoing operations'.
Solidarity said it has helped some people understand the application process better and referred them to the right people at the US embassy. They have also assisted the US government in determining the criteria for Afrikaner refugee status.
'Our primary focus is not refugee status for Afrikaners, but rather to find ways to ensure a free, safe, and prosperous future for Afrikaners in South Africa. We remain 100% convinced that South Africa can and must create a home for all its people,' Kleynhans said.
He added that at least 20% of Afrikaners have already left the country 'because if they stayed, they would have been unemployed'.
Kleynhans said he was campaigning in at least ten countries to increase international pressure on the SA government in the run-up to the G20 summit.
On criticism that this refugee path is politically motivated, Kleynhans said: 'The American refugee programs are paid for by American taxpayers and it is outrageous that international organisations and foreign groups think they can dictate to the Trump administration who should be eligible for refugee status. If Americans disagree with Trump on this, they can elect a different president in three years."
Kallie Kriel, AfriForum's CEO, said he did not know the Afrikaners who were leaving because they applied directly to the US embassy.
'Our view is not to condemn people (who are) leaving, but rather to condemn the circumstances in the country that have led to this, such as hateful chants, like 'Kill the Boer'," he said.
Kriel added that matters were compounded by the government, including the president and courts, which failed to condemn the chant.
He acknowledged that everyone in the country has challenges, but said Afrikaners felt threatened by the open call for such violence with the 'Kill the Boer' chant.
'No community should be targeted through calls for violence. Also taking away the future of young people who now have to go into the labour market, but then are discriminated against based on their skin colour.
'We want to address that, and that is why we are vocal, because we want to make sure that South Africa truly belongs to all who live in it,' Kriel said.
Dr Noluthando Phungula, an international relations expert, said it would appear that Washington still holds on to the notion of a white genocide, and it is unlikely that there will be a large exodus, as the privileged white Afrikaner population will not want to leave their life of privilege and comfort in South Africa.
Professor Siphamandla Zondi, a political analyst from the University of Johannesburg, said the US's welcoming of the second batch of white Afrikaners should not surprise anyone, especially in the absence of a change of US policy.
'We should expect more and more poor Afrikaners to take advantage of this to get a free pass to the US in search of basic jobs, which ordinarily would prove difficult to get visas for,' Zondi said.
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Existing studies based on interviews with public advocates and government agencies confirm a positive trend, with public advocates increasingly successful in raising the standard for government evidence and warrant applications. The system can improve the quality of warrant applications and help reduce the burden on judges. Parliament should consider public advocate system now The Department of Justice disfavours the public advocate system without fully understanding its effectiveness because it is a new concept in South Africa. Its reluctance is evident in its lacklustre conclusion from preliminary research on the global landscape of the system. It only scratched the surface of some literature, failing to consider the latest rules, ignoring positive trends, and saying 'each country has a very different model of a public advocate, and that this role is not necessarily enabled by state surveillance legislation'. Given the emergence of spyware, the department should conduct more in-depth research into implementation models in other countries and carry out a detailed feasibility assessment of introducing the public advocate system within South African law, particularly in sensitive cases involving press freedom or source confidentiality. The department has failed to show an alternative solution. It argues that an automatic review mechanism would remedy the one-sided warrant hearing. Under this mechanism, all warrant decisions would be reviewed by another judge immediately after the original decision was made. However, such a system is simply less effective and incurs greater costs in both time and money compared with the public advocate system. As Professor Jane Duncan, who has written and worked extensively on public oversight of security agencies, has noted the review judge is likely to 'mirror the decisions', as review judges 'will still be making decisions based on the same one-sided secret evidence'. South Africa has the opportunity to implement a meaningful safeguard to be a model regionally and globally Parliament and the State Security Agency have justified concerns about the legislative gap and the resulting damage to state security. But South Africa is uniquely situated as a state that understands the damage a 'skewed notion of national security' can cause when it is 'weaponised and calculated to subvert the dignity of the majority of South Africans'. South Africa should not miss the present opportunity. The world is watching. Many countries, in Africa and beyond, are updating their surveillance laws. As the Constitutional Court stated, 'the right to privacy is singularly important in South Africa's constitutional democracy.' The world is waiting for South Africa to demonstrate its commitment to constitutional democracy — something that is urgently needed in the current global context. DM Hinako Sugiyama is a public interest lawyer licensed in both Japan and New York, USA, specialising in issues related to surveillance, human rights, and democracy. She currently supervises the work of the International Justice Clinic at the University of California, Irvine School of Law.
