US President Donald Trump has given members of South Africa’s Afrikaner community refugee status, alleging that a genocide was taking place in the country.
Nearly 60 of them have arrived in the US after being granted asylum.
The South African government allowed the US embassy to consider their applications inside the country, and let the group board a chartered flight from the main international airport in Johannesburg – not scenes normally associated with refugees fleeing persecution.
Who are the Afrikaners?
South African History Online sums up their identity by pointing out that “the modern Afrikaner is descended mainly from Western Europeans who settled on the southern tip of Africa during the middle of the 17th Century”.
A mixture of Dutch (34.8%), German (33.7%) and French (13.2%) settlers, they formed a “unique cultural group” which identified itself “completely with African soil”, South African History Online noted.
Their language, Afrikaans, is quite similar to Dutch.
But as they planted their roots in Africa, Afrikaners, as well as other white communities, forced black people to leave their land.
Afrikaners are also known as Boers, which actually means farmer, and the group is still closely associated with farming.
In 1948, South Africa’s Afrikaner-led government introduced apartheid, or apartness, taking racial segregation to a more extreme level.
This included laws which banned marriages across racial lines, reserved many skilled and semi-skilled jobs for white people, and forced black people to live in what were called townships and homelands.
They were also denied a decent education, with Afrikaner leader Hendrik Verwoerd infamously remarking in the 1950s that “blacks should never be shown the greener pastures of education. They should know their station in life is to be hewers of wood and drawers of water”.
Afrikaner dominance of South Africa ended in 1994, when black people were allowed to vote for the first time in a nationwide election, bringing Nelson Mandela and the African National Congress (ANC) to power.
Afrikaners currently number more than 2.5 million out of a population of more than 60 million – about 4%.
Is a genocide being committed?
None of South Africa’s political parties – including those that represent Afrikaners and the white community in general – have claimed that there is a genocide in South Africa.
But such claims have been circulating among right-wing groups for many years and Trump also referred to a genocide during his first term.
The claims stem from attacks on white farmers, or misleading information circulated online.
In February, a South African judge dismissed the idea of a genocide as “clearly imagined” and “not real”, when ruling in an inheritance case involving a wealthy benefactor’s donation to white supremacist group Boerelegioen.
South Africa does not release crime figures based on race but the latest figures revealed that 6,953 people were murdered in the country between October and December 2024.
Of these, 12 were killed in farm attacks. Of the 12, one was a farmer, while five were farm dwellers and four were employees, who are likely to have been black.
What have Trump and Musk said?
Defending his decision to give Afrikaners refugee status, Trump said that a “genocide” was taking place in South Africa, white farmers were being “brutally killed” and their “land is being confiscated”.
Trump said that he was not sure how he could attend the G20 summit of world leaders, due to be held in South Africa later this year, in such an environment.
“I don’t know how we can go unless that situation’s taken care of,” he added.
South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has said it was “completely false” to claim that “people of a certain race or culture are being targeted for persecution”.
Referring to the first group who have moved to the US, he said: “They are leaving because they don’t want to embrace the changes that are taking place in our country and our constitution.”
The government denies that land is being confiscated from farmers, saying that a bill Ramaphosa signed into law in January was aimed at addressing the land dispossession that black people faced during white-minority rule.
But the law has been condemned by the Democratic Alliance (DA), Ramaphosa’s main coalition partner in government. The DA say it will challenge the law in South Africa’s highest court, as it threatens property rights.
Trump’s close adviser Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa, has referred to the country’s “racist ownership laws”, alleging that his satellite internet service provider Starlink was “not allowed to operate in South Africa simply because I’m not black”.
To operate in South Africa, Starlink needs to obtain network and service licences, which both require 30% ownership by historically disadvantaged groups.
This mainly refers to South Africa’s majority black population, which was shut out of the economy during the racist system of apartheid.
The Independent Communications Authority of South Africa (Icasa) – a regulatory body in the telecommunications and broadcasting sectors – told the BBC that Starlink had never submitted an application for a licence.
Musk has also accused the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), the fourth-largest party in South Africa, of “actively promoting” a genocide through a song it sings at its rallies.
