NewStats: 3,262,536 , 8,177,408 topics. Date: Monday, 02 June 2025 at 03:41 PM x163e

Dozens of Afrikaners who claim discrimination in their home country left Johannesburg on Sunday. Their departure for the U.S. came as the Trump istration was halting virtually all refugee issions.


A U.S.-funded charter plane carrying dozens of white South Africans who claim to have been victims of discrimination in their home country left Johannesburg on Sunday, heading for the United States, where the Trump istration is welcoming them as refugees.

The departure of the white South Africans, who say they have been denied jobs and have been targeted by violence because of their race, was a remarkable development in President Trump’s redefining of U.S. foreign policy.

Mr. Trump has halted virtually all refugee issions for people fleeing famine and war from places like Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But he has created an expedited path into the country for Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority that created and led the brutal apartheid regime in South Africa.

The refugee process often takes years. But only three months have ed from the time Mr. Trump signed an executive order establishing refugee status for Afrikaners to the first cohort making its way to America.

Families lining up to check in for the flight on Sunday evening at O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg waved off questions from reporters, saying that the U.S. Embassy instructed them not to speak with the news media. Parents, with children in tow, pushed trolleys piled high with luggage, and spoke quietly among themselves.

One of the travelers briefly cracked a smile when asked if he would miss rugby, a favorite sport of Afrikaners, and biltong, a popular beef jerky-like snack. But the police occasionally reprimanded journalists, saying they did not want them to antagonize the Afrikaners.

In all, 49 Afrikaners were boarding the flight, according to a spokesman for South Africa’s airport authority.

While istration officials plan to celebrate the Afrikaners upon their scheduled arrival on Monday morning in Washington, aid groups, immigrant rights activists and the South African government and public have criticized the refugee initiative, saying it makes a mockery of a system devised to help the most vulnerable.

Even some leading Afrikaner activists in South Africa have said they would prefer if Mr. Trump provided for them to build a better life at home.

The Afrikaner refugee program seems to have deepened tensions in an already strained relationship between South Africa and the United States.

While Mr. Trump has equated efforts by the South African government to undo racial inequalities created by apartheid to anti-white discrimination, South African officials have cast the granting of refugee status to Afrikaners as a politically motivated attempt to discredit the country.

The Trump istration has criticized the South African government for having a close relationship with Iran and for its strong stance against Israel, including bringing a genocide case at the International Court of Justice over the war in Gaza.

But for many Afrikaners, the descendants of European colonizers who arrived in the country some four centuries ago, this moment goes beyond politics.

No white person in their right mind would stay in this country,” said Jaco van der Merwe, 52, an Afrikaner living in Johannesburg, adding that he and his wife had been the victims of violent attacks and ed over for jobs because they are white. “I believe South Africa is finished.”

Mr. van der Merwe said he had reached out to the United States Embassy in South Africa to ask about applying for refugee status, but had not yet received a response.

The State Department said in March that it had received inquiries from more than 8,000 people. It is unclear when the government will it more.

Much of the discontent among Afrikaners centers on their experiences in rural communities and tensions over land ownership that remain unresolved since the end of apartheid more than 30 years ago.

Many Afrikaners farm to make a living. During apartheid, the government denied Black South Africans the right to own prime agricultural land. That meant that almost all of the country’s large-scale commercial farmers were white, and that remains so to this day.

Although white South Africans make up only 7 percent of the population, they own farmland that covers about half of the country. That is indicative of a broader prosperity gap, with white South Africans enjoying much higher employment rates, lower poverty rates and more lucrative wages than their Black counterparts.

The government’s efforts to redistribute land after apartheid have largely fallen flat because of a variety of factors, including corruption, a lack of financial for Black farmers and the inability to get enough white South Africans to voluntarily sell their land.

This year, South Africa’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, signed into law a measure that gives the government the ability to take private property without paying compensation. Although legal experts say uncompensated seizures are subject to strict judicial review and are likely to be rare, Afrikaner community leaders have expressed fears that white farmers will have their land taken from them.

Although there have not been any seizures, Mr. Trump said, inaccurately, on social media in February that the South African government was confiscating land.

https://www.nytimes.com/2025/05/11/world/africa/white-south-africans-granted-refugee-status-by-trump-leave-for-us.html?

This is so racist and it's just too obvious considering the brutality with which the Trump istration is treating refugees from other countries that are already in the US


I hope Cyril Ramaphosa strips these freeloaders of their citizenship and ban them from coming back to south Africa

Just proves that Trump is a racist.

Whites first.

I say "good riddance" to them

Black South Africans go dey happy like dis.... Mandela got them freedom, but the whites were not punished for their atrocities....

No it is not racist

It is about looking out for your race

Wanting the best for them and caring for them.

Can you say Nigerian leaders genuinely and deeply care for the masses?

If they do, there will never be anything like or close to boko boko in Nigeria.

So until you are able answer that question keep quiet.

This is not comparison with advanced countries,
This is common sense, doing the right thing

Unless you want to tell me that the Nigerian sovereign way of life or brand of democracy means oppressing its people and make them miserable, so therefore no external influence should interfere.

What Obama the first black American werey president couldn't do for his fellow blacks,Trump is doing it well for his fellow whites...

Well,let's see how south Africa Is gonna look like when the whites have left

At least, there'd be no more apartheid in SA

Lol

With their investment in South Africa? I doubt strongly if the import ones would leave

I doubt if they would leave where they have kinglike status to a place where they would be refuges......what happens when trump leaves and another person comes and ask that they should leave

The developers are leaving SadAfrica and leaving the refugees behind? Ahhhh🤣🤣🤣🤣

Hypocrite

Okay

Donald Trump is a cun man




Amarica may experience was leadership in history in this Trump istration

So white people can be refugees? Interesting times...

All thanks to the ever jealous black south Africans who would have been showing them shege pro max

Before the expiration of trumps 4years the world will not remain thesame

Ok naa.

Whites Doing Whites

I identify as white

Good riddance.

Even Tinubu went to Lagos state as a refugee but he criminality claim to be a lagosian instead of his home state of Osun

The guy is not fit to be a leader.

Sad Africa wld return to zero when the whites eventually leave the country.

I am kind of happy sha. Let's see what wld become of sad Africa...

Developers are leaving SA to USA
Developers will soon leave Naija here to ISRAEL too
Good luck to them

They do not belong to South Africa in the first place. Funny thing is those (whites) that matters will rather be nuked to smithereens than leaving SA for anything.

VeeVeeMyLuv:
No it is not racist

It is about looking out for your race

Wanting the best for them and caring for them.

Can you say Nigerian leaders genuinely and deeply care for the masses?

If they do, there will never be anything like or close to boko boko in Nigeria.

So until you are able answer that question keep quiet.

This is not comparison with advanced countries,
This is common sense, doing the right thing

Unless you want to tell me that the Nigerian sovereign way of life or brand of democracy is to oppress it's people make them miserable, so therefore no external influence should interfere.

Is Trump the president of South Africa?

VeeVeeMyLuv:
No it is not racist

It is about looking out for your race

Wanting the best for them and caring for them.

Can you say Nigerian leaders genuinely and deeply care for the masses?

If they do, there will never be anything like or close to boko boko in Nigeria.

So until you are able answer that question keep quiet.

This is not comparison with advanced countries,
This is common sense, doing the right thing

Unless you want to tell me that the Nigerian sovereign way of life or brand of democracy is to oppress it's people make them miserable, so therefore no external influence should interfere.

Trump slave

nairalanda1:
Just proves that Trump is a racist.

Whites first.

Simple as ABC

Nobody should pretend anymore, fascism and white supremacists runs the world.

Yeah the lefties have tried and shouldn't give up but the reality is that we still live in a grossly unfair world

Fre

VeeVeeMyLuv:
No it is not racist

It is about looking out for your race

Wanting the best for them and caring for them.

Can you say Nigerian leaders genuinely and deeply care for the masses?

If they do, there will never be anything like or close to boko boko in Nigeria.

So until you are able answer that question keep quiet.

This is not comparison with advanced countries,
This is common sense, doing the right thing

Unless you want to tell me that the Nigerian sovereign way of life or brand of democracy is to oppress it's people make them miserable, so therefore no external influence should interfere.

It's racist.

Did anyone forced them to SA in the first place, the barged their way in.

And Trump is just overreacting to the matter because of Elon Musk

No actions taken to return them back to wherever is too much.

The thing he's doing that's not racist is with the deportation of illegals, they didn't come in legally and shouldn't be accorded any legalities when being removed