South African leaders and scholars dispute the qualification of “refugees” for white South Africans relocating to the United States, after US authorities welcomed a first group of Afrikaners on Monday.

The group, made of 49 people according to Associated Press and 59 according to Reuters, were granted refugee status under a relocation programme announced by the Trump administration in February. 

While obtaining for refugee status in the US can be a yearslong process, the US government fast-tracked applications from white South Africans, under the justification that they were the targets of persecution and racial discrimination in their homeland. 

US President Donald Trump told reporters at the White House on Monday that Afrikaners were victims of a genocide, echoing the far-right conspiracy theory supported by his South African-born adviser Elon Musk. 

In February, a South African court dismissed claims of a white genocide in the country as “clearly imagined and not real.”

South African authorities have also repeatedly disputed allegations of persecution and discrimination against this white minority group.

“A refugee is someone who has to leave their country out of fear of political persecution, religious persecution or economic persecution, and they don’t fit that bill”, South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa said during a conference in Abidjan on Monday.

“Those people who have fled are not being persecuted. They are not being hounded. They are not being treated badly. They are leaving ostensibly because they don’t want to embrace the changes that are taking place in our country, in accordance with our Constitution”, he added.

Afrikaners, who mainly descend from Dutch settlers, are among the “most economically privileged” in the country, South Africa’s government said in a February statement.

“Certainly, these individuals don’t fall in the category of refugee,and the reason why the South African government has to insist on this is because it ys going to then give credibility to the lie that indeed they are being persecuted, that indeed they are running away from some conflict, some white genocide and so forth”, said Dr. Oscar van Heerden, senior research fellow at the centre for African Diplomacy and Leadership at the University of Johannesburg.

Dr. van Heerden said the US had to call white South African “refugees” to justify the expenses necessary to their relocation.

“We traditionally over the last 30 years have been a receiver of refugees from all over the Southern African continent”, he said.

“And now because of this stunt that is being pulled by the Trump administration, they are trying to say to the world that we ourselves have now become a country where people are seeking refugee status.” 

In a phone conversation, South Africa’s president Cyril Ramaphosa told Donald Trump he had received false information on Afrikaners’ situation.  

Trump told reporters he planned to address the issue with South African leadership in a meeting next week. 

The group of Afrikaners arrived at Dulles International Airport outside Washington DC on a private charter plane and were greeted by Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and Homeland Security Deputy Secretary Troy Edgar. 

The US government has made the resettlement of white South Africans a priority, despite engaging in a wider crackdown on asylum seekers from other countries. 

On the same day that Afrikaners arrived in the US, the Trump administration revoked temporary deportation protections for Afghan people, citing “an improved security situation” and a “stabilising economy” in Afghanistan, which is ruled by the Taliban

Source: Africanews