Some Afrikaners say Trump is being lying on a “white genocide” in South Africa: “
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Debora Patta
Foreign News themezone correspondent
Debora Patta is a foreign News themezone correspondent based in Johannesburg. Since he joined News themezone in 2013, he reported on important stories in Africa, the Middle East and Europe. The Edward R. Murrow and Scripps Howard awards are among the many praise Patta has received for their work.
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Sarah Carter is an award -producing News themezone producer based in Johannesburg, South Africa. She has been with News themezone since 1997, after an independent work for organizations such as the New York Times, National Geographic, PBS Frontline and NPR.
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Trump, Ramaphosa is faced with the claim of genocide
Refugee admissions to the United States have stopped, except a group, or a “small subset”, as the Secretary of State Frame Rubio called them on Tuesday: Afrikaners. They are members of the white ethnic minority who once led the brutal apartheid regime of four decades in South Africa, which ended in 1994 with the election of Nelson Mandela as president.
The Trump administration has already welcomed the First group of Afrikaner asylum applicantswho were given a refugee status issued after stating that they were victims of violence and discrimination in South Africa.
Other Afrikaners are waiting, eager to take advantage of the offer of a special treatment of the Trump administration to obtain a protected state and the right to live and work in the United States.
These applicants have gathered to share information about the process, including Dolf Grobler, which he has already requested. The professional hunter told News themezone that he has $ 2.5 million to help the United States be great again.
“I worry that the genocide, which currently focuses mainly on white farmers, extends,” he said. He claim of a white genocide It is one that President Trump’s advisor, Elon Musk, whose family is Afrikaners, has supported.
The musk joined Mr. Trump in the White House on Wednesday as an American leader He received the president of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa For an official visit. The Afrikaner refugee program was a topic of discussion, together with commerce and other issues. At the Oval Office meeting, Ramaphosa backed Trump’s repeated statements that the whites were attacked.
“Those people in many cases are being executed, executing, and are white, and most are farmers,” Trump said, and described the situation “something opposed to apartheid.”
“The people who are killed, unfortunately, through criminal activities, are not only white. Most of them are black people,” Ramaphosa said.
According to the South African police, in the last three months of 2024, 12 people were killed in farms there; One was a white farmer, while the others were black workers or security workers. When asked if he believed that life for him and his family was better under apartheid, an openly racist minority rule system that denied equal rights over the great black population of South Africa, Grobler did not hesitate.
“Yes,” he told News themezone. “I can’t say in my heart that we are better now.” Although admitted the apartheid was wrong.
The claims of a white genocide often circulate on right -wing groups, but the opinion is not mainly maintained within the Afrikaner community.
Commentator Afrikaner Piet Croump, an academic at the Northwest University of South Africa, says the statements are simply false.
“There are no signs of this, it has never been. In fact, whites are economically the strongest group” in South Africa, Croucamp told News themezone. “64% of all joint rooms in South Africa are still white. The average income of white South Africans is much higher than black South Africans … They have a better schools, they have a better education, private medical attention. This is the land of milk and honey if you are white.”
Croump suspects that the South African government Strong posture against Israel’s actions in Gazaand his Relationships with ChinaI could have played some role in Mr. Trump’s decision to adopt the controversial amnesty program for Afrikaners, but he believes there is more.
“In South Africa, the right -wing groups, the so -called civil society groups, we know that they have access to the Trump administration because they claim that. And in recent days, several times, they have said they will talk to the US government, as if they have access to them. And if they listen to what Trump has said, exactly corresponds to the narrative of the genocuro they sell and that they sell.” “So, I’m afraid I have to believe them when they say they have direct access to the Trump administration, and we see what Trump has been doing.”
To the questioned about the refugee program on Tuesday in Capitol Hill, in an irritable exchange with Democratic Senator Tim Kaine of Virginia, the Rubio Secretary of State insisted that the United States foreign policy “does not require an imperfect, implies prioritizing the interests of the United States … The United States has the right to choose and choose who they allow in the United States.”
White South Africans represent only about 7% of the country’s population, but still have more than half of their cultivation lands. And although the country has a surprisingly high crime rate, racial reasons are generally not a factor, according to Afrikaner cattle farmer, Nick Serfontein.
He acknowledged that violent attacks against farmers occur, especially in agricultural lands near large cities, where there are often large and impoverished populations, but he generally said: “I feel safe. I sleep with my doors open here on the farm.”
There have also been accusations that white farmers are victims of land expropriation, and the government seized farms without providing compensation. In January, Ramaphosa signed measures in law to expropriate mostly unused land for public use, which his government said it was necessary to address the consequences of apartheid decades. Although the law establishes fair compensation in most cases, it also allows expropriation without compensation in limited circumstances. And any measure can be challenged in court.
Trump has argued that white owners are unjustly addressed, although the law does not mention the race of anyone who can be affected under legislation.
And what is more important, there has not been a single case of expropriation without documented compensation in the 31 years since the apartheid ended.
Serfontein argues that the problem is not a deliberate effort of the government to take white land without compensation, but “due to a dysfunctional government. The model is wrong.”
He said that for decades, the Earth has been delivered to a black population with compensation for the former owners under established rules, but without any support for the new owners. Then, almost a decade ago, Serfontein helped launch a project aimed at training new black farmers to work on Earth.
To date, he says that he has personally helped to train more than 700 young black farmers, the next generation of the country of agricultural workers.
“I am extremely positive, and young people, young people, young people, are positive,” he said.
As for a white genocide, he agreed with Croump, saying bluntly: “It is not happening.”
Serfontein said he did not know the stories of the Afrikaners who had already left to the United States, and did not doubt that “they probably had some unhappy experiences in South Africa, about a series of things. But let me tell me that if you went to Nampo last week, the largest agricultural week of farmers, farmers of farmers in the south of the hemisulation. Future of South Africa “.
They want to grow in a country, says Serfontein, where most people understand that the earth must be shared by blacks and blacks.
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Debora Patta
Debora Patta is a foreign News themezone correspondent based in Johannesburg. Since he joined News themezone in 2013, he reported on important stories in Africa, the Middle East and Europe. The Edward R. Murrow and Scripps Howard awards are among the many praise Patta has received for their work.


