South Africa had “expressed concern” to the United States after reports it will accept from next week the first white Afrikaners it had offered to resettle, the foreign ministry said Friday.
US media reported Thursday that Donald Trump’s administration plans to welcome the first group of white South Africans as early as Monday, after the US president accused Pretoria of “racial discrimination” against them.
The South African government had “expressed concerns with the information conveyed that the United States has commenced with processing alleged refugees from South Africa”, the foreign ministry said.
“We reiterate that allegations of discrimination are unfounded,” it said in a statement.
“Moreover, even if there are allegations of discrimination, it is our view that these do not meet the threshold of persecution required under domestic and international refugee law.”
South African deputy foreign minister Alvin Botes had raised the concerns directly with his US counterpart Christopher Landau, it said.
Relations between South Africa and the United States have nose-dived this year over a range of domestic and foreign policy issues, culminating in Washington’s expulsion of Pretoria’s ambassador in March.
“It is most regrettable that it appears that the resettlement of South Africans to the United States under the guise of being ‘refugees’ is entirely politically motivated and designed to question South Africa’s constitutional democracy,” the foreign ministry said.
One of the sticking points is a land expropriation law signed in January that Trump has claimed would allow the South African government “to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation”.
The government has stressed the new law only allows authorities to expropriate property without compensation in the public interest compensation and after efforts had been made to reach a fair agreement with the owner.
Trump, whose tycoon ally Elon Musk was born in South Africa, said in February he would prioritise access to a refugee programme “for Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.”
This is despite his decision to halt refugee arrivals to the United States immediately after taking office in January.
Pathway to citizenship?
Trump said in March that any South African farmer and their families seeking to “flee” would have a “rapid pathway” to US citizenship.
Reports said afterwards that thousands of Afrikaners had approached the US embassy in Pretoria about the offer.
US investigative outlet The Lever quoted an April 30 memo saying that the first South Africans were scheduled to arrive “within a few days”.
Washington was preparing to resettle up to 1,000 Afrikaners this year, it said, quoting a government source.
National Public Radio (NPR) and the New York Times said the group was scheduled to arrive Monday, although the Times quoted officials saying the date could change depending on logistics.
The South African government wanted to know if those being accepted into the United States had the status of asylum seekers, refugees or ordinary citizens, the foreign ministry said.
It also wanted assurances that those who were leaving had been appropriately vetted including to ensure they do not have any criminal cases pending against them.
“Whilst South Africa challenges the United States’ assessments of alleged refugee status, it will not block citizens who seek to depart the country from doing so,” the statement added.
White Afrikaners are predominantly descendants of Dutch settlers who arrived at the tip of Africa more than three centuries ago. Today they make up most of South Africa’s 7.3 percent white population.
Mainly Afrikaner-led governments imposed the brutal race-based apartheid system that denied the black majority political and economic rights until it was voted out in 1994.
Their claims that white farmers are targeted for murder — despite official data that most victims of killings are young black men in urban areas — have morphed into a myth of a “white genocide”, also repeated by Trump.
