South African President: White Migrants Sent to U.S. ‘Not Being Persecuted’

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa insisted on Monday that the white South African refugees who are “being enticed to go to the United States” are not “being persecuted or treated badly.”

“They are leaving because they don’t want to embrace the changes taking place in our country in accordance with our Constitution,” Ramaphosa claimed.

“We were well taught by Nelson Mandela and Oliver Tambo on how to build a united nation. South Africa belongs to all who live in it, and no one is being driven out,” he said, strongly implying the “refugees” are merely unreasonable racists who cannot accept the post-apartheid government.

Fifty-nine members of the white ethnic minority known as Afrikaners arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport on Monday afternoon, including families with young children. They traveled on a resettlement flight chartered by the U.S. State Department and were met upon arrival by Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Department of Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar.

Critics of the executive order President Donald Trump signed in February to grant asylum status to Afrikaner refugees, while suspending aid to the South African government and shutting down many other refugee programs, accused him of fabricating or exaggerating the plight faced by the white minority in South Africa. Landau disputed those accusations when greeting the refugees on Monday.

“They tell quite harrowing stories of the violence that they faced in South Africa that was not redressed by the authorities by the unjust application of the law,” Landau said.

“The United States, as we were proud to say, has stood for equal justice under law and the fair and impartial application of the law,” he said.

Trump’s executive order in February accused Ramaphosa’s government of a “shocking disregard of its citizens’ rights” by seizing Afrikaner farmland “without compensation.”

“This act follows countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners,” the executive order said.

Ramaphosa insisted the Expropriation Act he signed in January, which did indeed permit confiscation of land without compensation to the owners when the government believes it is “just and equitable and in the public interest,” did not target any particular racial group.

American media organizations like the leftist New York Times (NYT) awkwardly struggled with South African police data to “prove” that, while a rather large number of whites have been killed on farms in South Africa relative to their share of the population, a lot of black citizens have been killed on farms, as well, and the evidence of systemic eradication necessary to support Trump’s claim of “genocide” does not exist:

South African police data does not support the narrative of mass murder. From April 2020 to March 2024, 225 people were killed on farms in South Africa, according to the police. But many of the victims — 101 — were current or former workers living on farms, who are mostly Black. Fifty-three of the victims were farmers, who are usually white.

Mr. Trump’s focus on this small group of refugees only served to underscore the tens of thousands of people all over the world whom his administration has decided to keep out, including Afghans who helped U.S. soldiers during the war in Afghanistan and Congolese citizens who had already been vetted and cleared to travel before Mr. Trump took office.

One of the refugees arriving at Dulles on Monday told the NYT she has been attacked on her farm four times, including an assault the day before she was interviewed by United States officials for her asylum claim.

Some other groups critical of Trump’s Afrikaner policy, notably including the International Rescue Committee (IRC), did not quibble too much with the claims of persecution made by the whites who fled South Africa. Instead, they objected to the administration welcoming this small group of refugees with open arms while shutting others out.

“The Trump administration should bring operations for all resettlement processes fully back online and restore refugee resettlement. In the midst of a complete suspension of the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program, the arrival of these families shows the U.S. has the capacity to remain a welcoming nation that provides a lifeline for people seeking safety from violence and persecution,” said Cinthya Hagemeier of the IRC.

Ramaphosa and his party, the African National Congress (ANC), accused the Afrikaners of fleeing “changes” and “transformation” – which implicitly acknowledges the white minority has good reason to think they will come out on the losing end of the transformation process.

White South Africans make up about seven percent of the population, but they own more than half of the farmland. These figures are often cited as evidence that the unfairness of the apartheid era persists, over three decades after it ended – but the same statistics make it entirely reasonable for the Afrikaners to believe they will be excessively penalized by land redistribution programs.

If history is any guide, it is also reasonable to suspect the Afrikaners will be verbally denigrated, and probably physically attacked, if they remain in the country and resist “transformation.” South Africa’s extreme left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters party has a habit of dancing and singing about slaughtering South Africa’s white landowners – which the South African government refuses to penalize despite its extensive legislation against alleged hate speech.