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The South African government says it is ironic that the US was offering refugee status for people from the most economically privileged part of society
Published : 25 Apr 2025, 08:15 AM
US officials have interviewed white South Africans seeking refugee status about their troubles with land disputes, crime and perceived racism, while refugees from other countries are being deported or barred from the United States.
Some of the South African applicants have taken part in a first round of interviews in Pretoria, three of them told Reuters, describing positive encounters with US officials who seemed well disposed towards them and their accounts of persecution.
More than 30 applicants have already been approved, according to a person familiar with the matter.
"The staff at the embassy were exceptionally friendly," said Mark, a South African farmer who did not wish his family name to be published as the process is confidential. "I could feel they had empathy."
The US administration and embassy in Pretoria declined to comment or give numbers of interviews and approvals.
US President Donald Trump issued a Feb 7 executive order that called for the US to resettle Afrikaner refugees. It said Afrikaners, who are descendants of mostly Dutch early settlers, were "victims of unjust racial discrimination".
The order came after Trump had suspended all US refugee admissions, citing security and cost concerns. Thousands of Afghans, Congolese and others fleeing conflict were blocked after they had been vetted and cleared.
The International Organization for Migration, a UN agency that helps people displaced by conflict, natural disasters or other major crises, declined a U.S. administration request to assist in resettling Afrikaners, the person familiar with the matter said.
The IOM did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Accounts from applicants who have been interviewed, the number of people approved so far and the request to the IOM have not previously been reported.
Two US refugee officers travelled to Pretoria to conduct interviews, said two US Department of Homeland Security officials, adding that some applicants who said Black South Africans had persecuted them had gained preliminary approval.
"I imagine some (applications) will be denied, as we do in all cases," said one official, speaking on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to discuss internal details about the process. "But I think there is administrative pressure to approve these."
Thrilled about Trump's order, Mark emailed the US embassy the next day, stating that he and his father had suffered grave injuries in a 2023 attack on their family farm.
Some time later, he received an email inviting him in. He and his wife flew to Pretoria for the interview, which lasted 55 minutes, he said. He saw the names of about a dozen other applicants signed in at the embassy.
EMPOWERMENT LAWS
Mark, who is in his 50s and worked in the food industry abroad for decades, said he had told US officials that Black empowerment laws had left him unemployable. The laws are intended by the government to correct past exclusion of Black South Africans from the economy under apartheid.
Reuters was unable to independently verify Mark's account or those of two other applicants who described their interviews and experiences of hardship.
The assertion that white South Africans are discriminated against, or even the victims of a "white genocide", has spread in far-right circles for years and been echoed by Trump's white South African-born ally Elon Musk.
Trump himself suspended aid to South Africa on the basis that it was being "terrible" to "long time farmers", an apparent reference to white farmers.
"They are confiscating their LAND and FARMS, and MUCH WORSE THAN THAT," he wrote on Truth Social.
People who espouse such views often cite employment laws, violent attacks on white farmers and a law enabling land expropriation for redistribution.
Out of 26,000 murders in South Africa last year, just 44 were linked to farming communities, according to police statistics. Crime researchers say the overwhelming majority of murder victims are Black.
"There is no evidence whatsoever that crime deliberately targets a particular race in this country," said Chrispin Phiri, a spokesperson for the South African foreign affairs ministry.
A third official at the Department of Homeland Security, also speaking on condition of anonymity, said there had been eye-rolling by some US refugee officers about the Afrikaners' claims.
The official said it had been well-established in the past that there was no persecution of white South Africans and that claims of economic harm did not warrant refugee status.
US Citizenship and Immigration Services, which is part of DHS, said in a statement that "all relevant evidence" would be considered to determine if applicants met the legal definition of a refugee.
PET DOGS
According to the South African Chamber of Commerce in the United States, over 67,000 people have expressed interest in Trump's offer. As of 2024, there were just 70 South African refugees and 2,043 asylum seekers in the United States, according to UN data which does not identify their race.
After Trump's order, hundreds of white South Africans joined informal WhatsApp groups where they share information about the process and ideas about life in America.
In one, reviewed by Reuters, applicants discussed potentially chartering a flight for their pet dogs.
One resettlement interviewee, a farmer who said her family were driven off their land following violent attacks by neighbours, got an hour-long interview at the embassy, where officials asked her what race the trespassers were and what the police did.
"We didn't have the sense we were rushed at all," she said. "They were very sensitive to what we'd been through."
She offered to provide documentation but the interviewers responded that they did not need it, she said.
A third farmer said she was invited for an interview after writing to the US embassy that she feared for her life "every day". She said her grandfather was murdered by his farm workers and she panics every time she hears a sound in the night.
'WHITE VICTIMHOOD'
The South African government said Trump's order failed to recognise the country's painful history of colonialism and apartheid, and it was ironic that it offered refugee status for people from the most economically privileged part of society.
Afrikaners make up about 60% of the country's white minority, which itself makes up 7.2% of South Africa's total population of 63 million.
Neither the administration nor the embassy in Pretoria responded to questions about whether white South Africans who are not Afrikaners would qualify for US resettlement.
The average white household in South Africa owns 20 times the wealth of the average Black household, according to the Review of Political Economy, an international academic journal. Official data shows that unemployment rates are far higher among Black citizens.
Three-quarters of South Africa's private land is still white-owned and not a single expropriation has taken place.
"The idea of white victimhood suggests that bad things happening to white people are infinitely worse than the same things happening to anybody else," said Nicky Falkof, head of the Centre for Diversity Studies at the University of Witwatersrand.
"So when crime happens to white people, it's not simply crime, it's a targeted racial genocide."
Katia Beeden, a would-be refugee who wears a MAGA cap and is involved in running a website called Amerikaners that seeks to help Afrikaners take up Trump's offer, said she felt victimised because of her race all the time.
"I reached a point where I was like, 'I can't do this anymore'," she said.
