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IOL News
18-05-2025
- Politics
- IOL News
Subverting democracy a key objective of anti-transformation movement
Leaders of AfriForum and Solidarity during their visit to the White House in the US earlier this year. South Africa's sovereignty somehow stands in the dock of America's kangaroo court that has arbitrarily found Pretoria guilty as charged by the likes of AfriForum, sections of the DA, Institute of Race Relations, Solidarity and others overtly or covertly, says the writer. Abbey Makoe NEVER in the history of democratic South Africa has so few caused so much pain to so many and with impunity. The preposterous saga of a very tiny minority of Afrikaners who this week flew to the US under the utterly false pretence of escaping persecution has pooh-poohed Mandela's dream of a South Africa for all races regardless of history. My fellow writer, Gillian Schutte, captured it all so well when she posted on X: 'This is not the Great Trek of wagons and rifles. It is the soft trek of displaced entitlement. Just the silent movement of whiteness away from discomfort and toward re-absorption into a global order that still centres it.' Phew! President Cyril Ramaphosa has been at pains attempting to convince the Trump administration that empirical evidence shows no proof of any iota of the alleged persecution of the Afrikaner community in democratic SA. The country's Minister of International Relations and Cooperation, Ronald Lamola, has also done his bit, trying strenuously to push back against the false narrative of discrimination against the Afrikaner based on their skin pigmentation, beliefs, religion or any basis for that matter. Thus far, Pretoria's decorous diplomatic engagements with Washington appear to have fallen on deaf ears. The most unfortunate consequence of this developing sorry saga is that some, perhaps many, outside of SA, believe this balderdash. For in plain language, the claptrap behind allegations of persecution is indefensible in any court of law, including the public court of opinion. The flight of unpatriotic Afrikaners who are reeling from the displeasure of losing the privileges of institutionalised racial discrimination triggered by the advent of democracy and equality before the law has cast misplaced scrutiny on SA's transformative agenda. A flurry of twists and turns, laced with utter falsehoods and geopolitical bullying of the weak by the powerful, all this is a concocted recipe to discredit a developing democracy that seeks to write the wrongs of the past in pursuit of a brighter future for all citizens. Amid the ensuing brouhaha, South Africa's sovereignty somehow stands in the dock of America's kangaroo court that has arbitrarily found Pretoria guilty as charged by the likes of AfriForum, sections of the DA, Institute of Race Relations, Solidarity and others overtly or covertly. Taking advantage of a hugely liberal Constitution that guarantees freedoms such as that of speech, thought and association, the fake refugees take umbrage with the country's developmental agenda without any fear of repercussions. Had it not been of the liberal nature of the predominantly Western-aligned Constitution, surely to travel abroad and speak ill of SA, conniving with foreign forces against the sitting administration, would constitute high treason. I also want to argue that this debilitating litany of lies about our country exposes the lingering fault lines in geopolitics and modern-day international relations practices. In my book, it reveals the extent of overbearing ideological power and dominance of the global neo-liberal forces that are premised on the notion of universal racial solidarity. Let's call it for what it is: The anti-transformation movement against South Africa is a heavily-funded, well-oiled machine that assumes various forms and postures. It seeks to portray, sadly with great success, the ANC-led governance of the country as anti-White and hell-bent on victimising minority groups, particularly Afrikaner farmers. The movement is also hugely networked in a world that has become interconnected and inter-dependent thanks to globalization. Inside the Trump administration, it boasts powerful contacts such as SA-born Elon Musk, who also happen to be world's wealthiest person. For the uninitiated, SA's democracy was founded on the back of hard negotiations between the Mandela-led ANC and the De Klerk-led segregationist white minority regime of the National Party. The CODESA negotiations produced a negotiated settlement and later a liberal Constitution that guarantees the protection of property rights. This section of the law insulated the minority white population of the country against any threat to the wealth they had amassed over more than 350 years of Black subjugation. For the record, to this day, there is no single member of any minority group, including Afrikaners, ever to be threatened with the loss of any rights under the challengeable laws of the land. The dirty campaign against South Africa by a tiny minority of South Africans, therefore, serves as a blatant affront to the inclusive foundations of our nascent democracy. Since the first batch of Afrikaners flew out in a chartered plane from OR Tambo International en route to the land of Coca-Cola and hamburgers that symbolise the mink and manure, there has been a heightened debate about race relations in our country. The conclusion is, however, not difficult to reach: Despite a myriad of dichotomous standpoints, the centre first built by Madiba and De Klerk still holds firm. But that said, it would be foolhardy to ignore the reputational damage and significant harm caused to the international standing of SA by the Trump administration's mischievous peddling of falsehoods about our country's complex and difficult transition from the old to the new order. Just as President Trump believes in the misrepresentation of facts, so too do millions of people, especially the Republican voters who believe the balderdash espoused by some among us, against us. It is this certainty of the looming damage to SA's good name that pains me more. It hurts deeply, because our citizens have elected to disown us in the most ignominious fashion – hanging our dirty linen in public and inconsiderately seeking to throw us to the wolves. President Ramaphosa-led government has been accused of enacting the Expropriation of Land without Compensation to the detriment of the Afrikaners who own large swathes of land acquired at the height of apartheid through the displacement of Black people. Yet the truth is, the Act speaks of a careful need to free relevant portions of land parcels for 'public good' should the need arise. No single Afrikaner farmer has been targeted. But for those who are hankering for the preservation of apartheid-era white privileges, they'd like the US and the rest of the West to view SA with jaundiced eyes, and accordingly punish the country by imposing sanctions. The hurt that all patriotic South Africans should feel at this point is owed to the sheer impunity that the Judases who flew out as refugees this week enjoy, thanks to the most powerful nation on Earth. Just the other week, our Constitutional Court also ruled that people such as the fake refugees may never lose their citizenship even if they take up the citizenship of another country. In my view, and that's the view of many others, SA is being punished through a malicious public relations campaign for not kowtowing to the whims of Washington's foreign policy dictates. The membership of BRICS is also not helpful for SA. The Trump administration regards BRICS as an aberration. Additionally, SA's claim of non-alignment of foreign policy is also viewed by Washington and the West as a load of baloney. Lastly, tackling the untouchable Israel and hauling Tel Aviv before the International Court of Justice on charges of genocide against the Palestinians was the last straw that broke the camel's back. These are unstated truths at the centre of the deteriorating bilateral relations between Pretoria and Washington. Being the weaker economy, and refusing to be bullied in internal affairs, we can expect that the plot against our nation will continue to thicken. The first batch of Afrikaner refugees is only a ploy and pawn in the greater scheme of things. By all accounts, more Afrikaners will leave soon on a ticket of blatant lies about being persecuted. Let's connect the dots here. The US is boycotting our presidency of the G20. Mark my words: It will be a miracle if the US does not kick SA out of AGOA in a jiffy. Our sin is one - We are too independent for a 'small' country. But then again, they forget that we are Mandela's and Tutu's rainbow nation, replete with imperfections but morally upright. *Abbey Makoe is Publisher and Editor-in-Chief: Global South Media Network ( The views are personal. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL, Independent Media or The African
IOL News
16-05-2025
- Politics
- IOL News
White Refugees in South Africa: Fear, Fiction, or Historical Reckoning?
Is the idea of white refugees in South Africa fact or fiction — a genuine fear, or a red herring distracting us from deeper truths about belonging and identity in this country? Image: Independent Media By Dr. Iqbal Survé In the decades since apartheid ended, one of the lingering questions that continues to quietly shape conversations — often behind closed doors — is this: what really happened to white people in South Africa and Namibia? It is a question loaded with discomfort, political risk, and emotional complexity. But it must be confronted, not to divide, but to understand, to heal, and ultimately, to move forward as a country still scarred by a deliberately engineered racial order. Let us begin with a difficult truth: 'whiteness' itself is a construct, one built for power, not for identity. It is not a culture. It is not ancestry. It is not a shared language or history. Whiteness was invented to justify hierarchy, exclusion, and economic dominance under colonialism and apartheid. Today, that very construct has become something of an embarrassment, not because of individual white people, but because of the violence, dispossession, and social engineering it was used to justify. When apartheid fell, many expected a retribution that never came. South Africa chose reconciliation over revenge. White South Africans remained in the country, kept their homes, businesses, and communities, and were welcomed into a democratic project that, in truth, they had historically resisted. But with political power shifted, many white South Africans began to feel like refugees in the land they once controlled. Not legal refugees, of course — but cultural and psychological ones, displaced by a changing society that no longer centred them. This discomfort is not new. Nearly two centuries ago, the Great Trek saw Afrikaner settlers leave the Cape Colony in response to British rule and laws, including the abolition of slavery, that threatened their social and economic dominance. It was not simply a journey into new lands, but an escape from the loss of power, rebranded as the pursuit of freedom. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Next Stay Close ✕ What is often left out of that story is how the Trek itself was entangled with the question of slavery. When the British Empire abolished slavery in 1834, the Cape Colony was still deeply invested in the practice, particularly the Boer farmers, many of whom relied on enslaved labour. Instead of accepting this shift toward human freedom, they resisted. Some took their enslaved people with them on the Trek, converting them into indentured labourers, a softer name for continued bondage. In fact, while slaves were freed across the British Empire in 1834, emancipation in the Cape was delayed until 1838, revealing just how deep the resistance to equality truly ran. There are those who claim 'white genocide' or persecution. That is not the reality. There is no mass campaign to eliminate white people, and no government policy that seeks to marginalise them in the way black South Africans were for centuries. What we see instead is discomfort, a loss of dominance being reframed as victimhood. This is not persecution; it is the pain of unlearning privilege. In Namibia, the story is parallel but distinct. German colonisers committed genocide against the Herero and Nama people long before apartheid was formally constructed. Namibia's white population, especially those of German descent, held on to wealth and status long into independence. Today, much like in South Africa, they are negotiating a new national identity that requires more than economic participation, it demands historical accountability. Some have even gone as far as to claim refugee status in other countries, citing 'reverse racism' and fears of crime or dispossession. While it is true that crime and inequality plague South Africa, these are national problems, not racially targeted ones. The principle of course — the fear, the sense of exclusion — is real to those who feel it. But it must be understood in its proper context: not as persecution, but as a shift in historical balance. This is not a call to shame anyone. It is a call to reflect. Because we are now in a moment where the very idea of whiteness, as a social, political, and economic identity, is unravelling, and rightly so. The future must be built on shared citizenship, not racial exceptionalism. And the past must be remembered with honesty, not revisionism. White South Africans and Namibians have not disappeared. They have not been persecuted. But they have been challenged, to let go of inherited privilege, to integrate into a society that is no longer structured for their comfort, and to participate in building a future that isn't only theirs. Black South Africans, too, carry a burden, a burden of inherited trauma, systemic inequality, and centuries of exclusion. But the burden is not just economic. It is psychological. It is spiritual. And part of that healing requires that we all, black and white, understand the lies that built the system we inherited, and reject the identities it forced upon us. Whiteness, as a construct, must fall, not white people. The same way apartheid had to fall, not South Africa. In the end, we are not categories. We are not constructs. We are people. And our liberation, real, lasting liberation, can only come when we stop clinging to old labels and start facing each other as equals. South Africans, black and white, must finally overcome the hangover of more than a few hundred years. Because the future we deserve cannot be built by people still drunk on the past. * Dr. Iqbal Survé is the Executive Chairman of Sekunjalo and Independent Media. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.
IOL News
13-05-2025
- Politics
- IOL News
Whiteness, Trekking and the Spectacle of Persecution
Why are white Afrikaners framed as victims while brown-skinned refugees face harsh realities? Gillian Schutte delves into the complexities of race, migration, and historical narratives in the context of Donald Trump's refugee policy. Image: Saul Loeb / AFP By Gillian Schutte When Donald Trump offered refugee status to white South Africans, it became clear that whiteness still honours its own kin — globally, psychically, and politically. While brown-skinned refugees are shackled, deported, and held without trial in desert jails, Afrikaners were framed as the persecuted. Trump spoke of 'genocide' against farmers and dispatched America's welcome. The spectacle was complete — a rerun of old scripts in which the settler becomes the victim and the empire opens its gates not to the wretched of the earth, but to the discomforted custodians of colonial memory. They left with visas, suitcases, and nostalgia — a motley procession of pilgrims fleeing transformation. They cited crime, collapse, and instability. But beneath these explanations lies the deeper reason. The mirror of post-apartheid South Africa reflects something too sharp to bear — the end of centre-stage whiteness. The erosion of assumed status. And so they trek again. This is not the Great Trek of wagons and rifles. It is the soft trek of displaced entitlement. No fanfare. No anthem. Just the silent movement of whiteness away from discomfort and toward reabsorption into a global order that still centres it. The United States, itself built on the sacred blood of stolen land, provided the perfect terrain for this next trek. Trump's offer was more than a policy. It was sanctuary in sameness. Whiteness recognising itself in the face of dislocation, and offering a way back into its fold. But there is no trek without violence. Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Advertisement Video Player is loading. Play Video Play Unmute Current Time 0:00 / Duration -:- Loaded : 0% Stream Type LIVE Seek to live, currently behind live LIVE Remaining Time - 0:00 This is a modal window. Beginning of dialog window. Escape will cancel and close the window. Text Color White Black Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Background Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Opaque Semi-Transparent Transparent Window Color Black White Red Green Blue Yellow Magenta Cyan Transparency Transparent Semi-Transparent Opaque Font Size 50% 75% 100% 125% 150% 175% 200% 300% 400% Text Edge Style None Raised Depressed Uniform Dropshadow Font Family Proportional Sans-Serif Monospace Sans-Serif Proportional Serif Monospace Serif Casual Script Small Caps Reset restore all settings to the default values Done Close Modal Dialog End of dialog window. Next Stay Close ✕ History has recorded this. My own lineage traces back to some of its early architects. Tjaart van der Walt, my ancestral uncle, moved into the Karoo and Eastern Cape interior during the frontier wars — into territories inhabited by the amaXhosa, the Khoekhoe, and the !Ora. There, land was seized, cultures were obliterated, and the rhetoric of civilisation marched hand-in-hand with brutality. My great-grandparents, Johan Pieter van der Walt and Hester Venter, were not warriors, but engineers of the white spiritual code. They helped build the first Nederduitse Gereformeerde Kerk in Middelburg — a sanctified laager in which Blackness was cast outside of God's favour, and land theft was moralised into divine instruction. This kind of history does not dissolve with migration. It travels. It informs the body, the posture, the speech. When Afrikaners claim refugee status, they are not only crossing borders — they are carrying a legacy of dominance that has never been publicly mourned. Psychoanalysis tells us that what is unprocessed festers. And so the guilt that was never named becomes projected as threat. The former beneficiary recasts themselves as the hunted. The discomfort of equality is rebranded as persecution. Hermann Giliomee maps this psychic architecture in The Afrikaners: Biography of a People. He writes of the laager mentality — the encircling of identity in times of perceived threat. He shows how Afrikaner nationalism was forged through a blend of Calvinist chosenness and settler trauma. Always chosen. Always suffering. Even in power. Especially in power. What is taking place now is another encircling. A soft siege. Except this time, it's not around a farm or church or town. It is around the idea of whiteness itself — its right to exist unchallenged. America becomes the next laager. Its conservative suburbs, evangelical churches, and racial hierarchies offer a new enclosure in which whiteness can breathe freely again — untroubled by questions of land, labour, or history. But there is always an outside to the laager. And it is always marked. While white South Africans are welcomed as 'refugees,' brown-skinned men with tattoos — many fleeing gang violence in Central America — are deposited into holding cells, criminalised before they speak, assumed guilty by skin and story. Their claim to safety is questioned. Their identity is scrutinised. They are reminders of how refuge is racialised. How the gates of the empire swing open only for those who mirror its founding myth. The Afrikaner trek to America is not a neutral act. It participates in this economy of racial privilege. It reinforces the idea that some displacements matter more than others. That some pasts deserve asylum, while others are punished into silence. And yet, those who trek now speak in hushed, melancholic tones. Their language is grief-coated, but the grief is for the fading of supremacy, not for the lives lost in its service. They mourn a world that no longer bends toward them. They carry a sadness born of de-centering. This melancholia is not harmless. It turns outward. It becomes anger. Projection. Myth. The 'farm murder' narrative, inflated beyond statistical reality, becomes a global meme — a rallying cry for white preservationists across continents. It is the displaced guilt of colonial violence, returning as spectacle. And the violence continues — quiet, bureaucratic, and structural. Every place granted to a white South African refugee is a place denied to someone fleeing genuine structural abandonment. Every narrative of 'Christian family values' masks another that is censored. Every visa is a decision about who is seen, and who is discarded. There is always blood in the trek. Always violence in the story of movement when whiteness seeks safety in sameness. This migration is not a rupture from history — it is its continuation by other means. The Afrikaner arrival in America will be welcomed, prayed over, and celebrated in spaces that still refuse to name conquest. But the ghosts will arrive too. The land does not forget. The unconscious does not release what has been buried. And eventually, even the trek loses its holiness. Because without truth, the journey is just repetition. A looping spectacle of evasion dressed up as exile. Why are white Afrikaners framed as victims while brown-skinned refugees face harsh realities? Gillian Schutte delves into the complexities of race, migration, and historical narratives in the context of Donald Trump's refugee policy. Image: IOL * Gillian Schutte is a South African writer, filmmaker, and critical-race scholar known for her radical critiques of neoliberalism, whiteness, and donor-driven media. Her work centres African liberation, social justice, and revolutionary thought. ** The views expressed do not necessarily reflect the views of IOL or Independent Media.
The Citizen
12-05-2025
- Politics
- The Citizen
Afrikaners pawns on Trump's board
Sadly for the immigrants, the culture shock will be huge and it will take all of their famed grit to make new lives for themselves. It is fascinating, given the current news, to look at the reasons for the original 'Great Trek' of Afrikaners – then known as Boers – from the British-controlled Cape Colony between 1835 and 1840. Many of the complaints and sentiments among those trekkers are similar to what Afrikaners are now saying as they line up to accept Donald Trump's refugee green card. In the 19th century, the Boers felt they were oppressed by the government; they wanted to preserve their culture and they desired new horizons and frontiers. Fleeing 'persecution' When the 50-odd former South Africans – for that is what they are – step off the plane in Washington, DC, today, they will feel they have fled persecution at the hands of the ANC, which, they claim, wants to take away their land and their culture. None of that has happened, mind you, but it makes a great story for our right-wing Afrikaner nationalists to tell their like-minded redneck friends in the States. Sadly for the immigrants, the culture shock will be huge, and it will take all of their famed grit to make new lives for themselves. Again, sadly, many will not realise that they are pawns or 'useful idiots' in the American president's plan to pander to his reactionary fanbase. ALSO READ: Resettlement of Afrikaners in US as refugees 'entirely politically motivated', Dirco says Myth of isolation He has shown that already by fast-tracking them, on flimsy evidence, over asylum seekers who are genuinely facing death and persecution in several countries. How Americans, already miffed at immigration in general, will react to them arriving in their communities and potentially taking away jobs from them, or receiving government benefits to help set themselves up, remains to be seen. The United States is a melting pot of peoples and cultures and it didn't get that way by people insisting on creating an island for their own. So, watch that space… NOW READ: First SA white Afrikaner refugees set to arrive in US next week
