Scores of South Africans retrenched by NGO processing Trump's Afrikaner ‘refugees'

Daily Maverick

a day ago

The organisation that aims to bring Kenyan workers to South Africa to process Afrikaner 'refugees' bound for the US laid off more than 100 South Africans last year.
Church World Service (CWS), the organisation tasked by the US State Department with processing Afrikaner 'refugees' for resettlement in the USA, retrenched about 100 workers in Pretoria in June last year.
CWS is now applying for 'volunteer' visas from the Department of Home Affairs for about 30 Kenyan workers to come to South Africa to work on the Afrikaner resettlement project — raising the question of why it is not attempting instead to re-employ the locals it made redundant last year.
Daily Maverick understands that the staffers, most of whom were South Africans, were retrenched when CWS closed its Resettlement Support Centre sub-office in Pretoria at the end of June 2024.
CWS did not respond to Daily Maverick's repeated requests for comment.
Office was in place from 2015 to 2024
'A new office in Pretoria, South Africa, enhances refugee support and programs to cover eight countries,' stated the CWS annual report in 2015.
'Working with the U.S. Department of State, we continue to increase the number of refugee cases in process each year, serving more than 40 countries in sub-Saharan Africa.'
An old job ad confirmed that the office was based in Pretoria, and stated that it was tasked with 'the preparation of refugee case files for adjudication by US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS) officers, as well as the out-processing and cultural orientation of all approved cases'.
The office's address was listed elsewhere as occupying premises on Fehrsen Street in Brooklyn, Pretoria.
Daily Maverick understands that staff were informed midway through last year that the volumes of refugees being processed from sub-Saharan Africa were no longer high enough to warrant a permanent office presence in South Africa.
That was, of course, when President Donald Trump's Afrikaner 'refugee' plan was not yet even a glimmer on the horizon.
Tens of thousands of Afrikaners to be brought over
Now, CWS finds itself in need of staff numbers to process the Afrikaner 'refugees' to be resettled — and a Reuters exclusive from last week makes it clear why it would need as many as 30 workers for the task.
Reuters, through interviews with US officials, has determined that the Trump administration ultimately aims to bring potentially 30,000 Afrikaners for resettlement in the US.
As far as is publicly known, only two groups of Afrikaner 'refugees' have thus far left for the US, with numbers probably not totalling more than 100.
This means that the scale of the task ahead for CWS is considerable.
Reuters also reported that the Trump administration looked set to admit only 40,000 refugees in total for the year ahead — meaning that fully 75% of the available US refugee spots would be reserved for Afrikaners.
This news comes at a time when the US State Department has announced a stop to all visitor visas for individuals from Gaza — which had previously been used for emergency purposes to treat injured children — on the grounds that they could be used by Palestinian refugees.
Afrikaner 'refugees' facing difficulties
As Daily Maverick has reported, the Afrikaner 'refugees' in the first two resettlement groups have not always found the grass on the other side to be as green as they may have hoped.
The Reuters exclusive fleshed out the picture, pointing out that after taking office, Trump slashed refugee benefits. Refugees had been eligible for cash and healthcare assistance for one year, but under Trump this has been reduced to four months.
Reuters reported on an email sent by one Afrikaner family to the Department of Health and Human Services, which is responsible for the refugee programme on US soil.
The family said they had found it impossible to secure a job without being issued a social security number, and that they had already spent $4,000 (more than R70,000) on food, transport and communications.
Adults expected to take low-level menial jobs
US public broadcaster NPR previously had sight of the documents given to the Afrikaner 'refugees' upon arrival.
In it, they were told: 'You are expected to support yourself quickly in finding work.'
It continued: 'Adults are expected to accept entry level employment in fields like warehousing, manufacturing, and customer service. You can work toward higher level employment over time.' DM