A cohort of 49 South Africans left the country on Saturday for the United States on a private charter plane after obtaining refugee status by the Trump administration as part of an anti-discrimination program announced in February.
The group, which included families and small children, was to arrive at Dulles International Airport outside Washington DC on Monday morning, according to Collen Msibi, spokesperson for the Ministry of Transport in South Africa.
They are the first Afrikaners, an ethnic group of Dutch and French origin whose ancestors settled South Africa in the 17th century, to move to the United States after President Trump published a decree on February 7, accusing the government of racial discrimination led by the blacks of South Africa against the group and announcing a program to move them.
“By undressing shocking the rights of its citizens, the Republic of South Africa (South Africa) recently promulgated Law 13 of the expropriation of 2024 (ACT) to allow the Government of South Africa to seize the agricultural property of the Ethnic minorities of the Afrikan minorities executive decree States.
The South African government vehemently denies that Afrikaners are victims of discrimination and have called the claim of the Trump administration “completely false”, adding that it depicts a non-representative image of the country.
At a press conference on Monday, questioned on the new Afrikaners group, which the United States has chosen to welcome as a refugee at a time when the country also performs mass deportations of foreign nationals, many of whom have legal status in the country, Trump said that “they are killed and we do not want to see people killed.”
Trump added that he will meet the South African leaders next week to discuss the question more.
“The management of South Africa comes to see me, I understand next week, and we are supposed to have, I suppose, a meeting of the G20 there or something. But we have a meeting of the G20, I do not know how we can go unless this situation is taken care of,” he said to journalists, adding that the treatment with the South African Government of Afrikaners is the amount of the genocide.
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“It is a genocide that takes place on which you do not want to write, but it is a terrible thing that takes place, and the farmers are killed, they are white, but whether they are white or black, makes no difference for me, but white farmers are brutally killed and that their land is confiscated in South Africa, and the newspapers and the media of television do not even talk about it. History they were talking about, “he continued.
The president did not develop this assertion, and he has provided no evidence of genocide against the group.
“I don’t care who they are, I don’t care about their race, their color, I don’t care about their size, their weight, I don’t care, I just know that what’s going on is terrible,” he continued.
“I have people who live in South Africa, they say that it is a terrible situation in progress, so we have essentially extended citizenship to these people to escape this violence and come here,” concluded the president.
The newly arrived South Africans are waiting to hear the welcome statements of US government representatives in a hangar in Atlantic Aviation Dulles near Washington International Airport Dulles on May 12, 2025, in Dulles, Virginia.
SOMODEVILLA / GETTY Images chip
According to South African authorities, Afrikaners are among the “most privileged people” in the country.
There are around 2.7 million Afrikaners among the 62 million people in South Africa, which is more than 80% black. Consequently, despite its minority, many in South Africa, given its heavy racial history, are confused by claims That white Afrikaners are persecuted and meet the requirements to be refugees.
The first group of Afrikaners from South Africa to arrive for resettlement listens to the remarks of the American deputy secretary of state Christopher Landau and the American deputy secretary of internal security, Troy Edgar (both out of state), after their arrival at Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, on May 12, 2025.
Photo of Saul Loeb / AFP via Getty Images)
There are many successful Afrikaner business leaders, some occupy posts from the government minister to the government, and their language, Afrikaans, is widely spoken – including by non -Afrikaners – and is recognized as an official language.
However, Trump and his colleague of South African origin, Elon Musk, accused the country’s government in February of implementing anti-white racist laws and economic policies that have a disproportionate impact in rural Afrikaner farmers.
The affirmations are based on a relatively low number of violent agricultural attacks and theft against whites in rural communities, but the United States alleys that attacks are racily motivated and that the South African government “feeds” them by allowing anti-white rhetoric to circulate and not to offer sufficient protection to white Afrikanists.
The government says that these claims are false, condemned agricultural attacks and says that their cause is deliberately falsified.
Violent attacks against agricultural owners in South Africa have been a problem for years, but cases represent a low percentage of extremely high violent crimes of the country, which affect all breeds. The government says there is no targeting of whites in South Africa and no persecution, and that agricultural attacks are part of its difficulties against violent crimes.
– with files from the Associated Press
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