Underneath the second Trump administration, there’s one group of individuals getting expedited entry to refugee standing and resettlement within the US.
It’s not residents of the Democratic Republic of the Congo, the place 6.1 million folks have been internally displaced attributable to many years of preventing amongst armed teams and widespread gender-based violence. The US isn’t presently accepting extra DRC residents as refugees beneath President Donald Trump.
It’s not Afghan residents both, regardless of the continued human rights violations, particularly in opposition to ladies and women, perpetrated by the Taliban after the US withdrawal from the nation in 2021. As a substitute, the Trump administration is now revoking non permanent protections for a lot of Afghans already in America, which may outcome of their deportation again to Afghanistan.
And it’s not the Sudanese folks, of whom almost 8.6 million have been internally displaced amid a battle between navy and paramilitary forces.
A subset of white South Africans, often called Afrikaners, are the one folks Trump has newly admitted to the US as refugees. Trump has described them, with out proof, as victims of a “genocide that’s going down” and anti-white discrimination, echoing rhetoric that has lengthy circulated on the far proper. And he’s sought to punish South Africa for that by slicing off US support.
(The US authorities must admit some refugees from different international locations who have been already within the resettlement pipeline earlier than Trump took workplace, per a courtroom order issued in late March after the president tried to droop virtually all refugee admissions. However that court-ordered acceptance is a pointy distinction from the administration’s enthusiastic outreach to Afrikaners.)
Trump’s effort to label Afrikaners “refugees” relies on doubtful pretenses. The South African authorities and even some white South Africans argue that, after the tip of the apartheid system, which supported white minority rule in South Africa till the early Nineteen Nineties, white folks stay a privileged class. The everyday Black family has 5 % of the wealth of the standard white family. And police knowledge doesn’t present that Afrikaners, lots of whom are farmers, endure from disproportionate ranges of violence that will quantity to genocide.
As a small minority of the inhabitants, white folks nonetheless personal a majority of the nation’s land. That hasn’t stopped Elon Musk from criticizing the nation’s land possession legal guidelines as “racist” in opposition to white folks following the signing of a land reform invoice earlier this yr.
The regulation permits the federal government to grab property with out compensation solely in restricted circumstances, together with when the land isn’t in use or has been deserted and if the proprietor is merely holding it as an funding within the hope that it’s going to respect in worth. Afrikaner farmers have argued that the regulation might be used to grab their land in opposition to their will, however the authorities has contested that declare, and there’s no proof that that is occurring.
As a substitute, the proof suggests Trump is selectively plucking a white minority for resettlement, at the same time as nonwhite folks going through conflict and famine world wide have been shut out from safety within the US.
On Monday, the primary group of those Afrikaners, 49 folks in whole, arrived within the US, the place they are going to be supplied a “fast pathway” to US citizenship and obtain help from a refugee workplace throughout the Division of Well being and Human Providers.
To study extra in regards to the impetus behind Trump’s determination, in addition to in regards to the state of affairs in South Africa, I spoke with Jacob S. Dlamini, a Princeton College historical past professor whose analysis has centered on South African apartheid. Our dialog has been edited for size and readability.
Do white Afrikaners have a legit declare to refugee standing?
I grew up beneath apartheid, actually beneath indicators that stated, “Whites solely.” White boys chased Black of us for sport after I was rising up. This looks like an actual kick within the intestine.
There isn’t a substance to the declare that Afrikaners as a bunch have been persecuted. These aren’t refugees by any stretch of the creativeness. They’re individuals who merely don’t need to dwell beneath majority-Black rule.
A few of them will discuss crime. I come from a household of small enterprise homeowners who’ve suffered due to crime. I’ve misplaced associates to crime. I’ve misplaced family members to crime. Impartial stats present that whites as a bunch are not disproportionately focused. If something, it’s poor individuals who bear the brunt of South Africa’s crime downside — and it’s a significant issue.
In his govt order granting refugee standing to white Afrikaners, Trump referenced the South African authorities’s current land reform invoice, which he claims permits the seizure of “ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property with out compensation” and is “fueling disproportionate violence in opposition to racially disfavored landowners.” Does that sq. with the fact in South Africa?
The very first piece of laws that Nelson Mandela signed into regulation when he turned president in Might of 1994 was a land reform invoice whose job was to right what is basically South Africa’s unique political sin, and that was the taking away of land from indigenous peoples and allocating it to white South Africans for unique possession. For the previous 30 years, the federal government has truly failed spectacularly on that entrance. That failure helps clarify why at present, in Might 2025, whites nonetheless personal greater than 70 % of farmland in South Africa. [Editor’s note: Only 7 percent of the country’s population is white.]
In truth, as white farmers themselves have been mentioning ever since Trump introduced his plans to do that, no single white farmer has had land taken away from him, and there’s no suggestion that that’s going to alter anytime quickly.
Do you suppose Trump’s coverage is proof of Elon Musk’s affect on this administration?
Musk isn’t the one South African who’s bought Trump’s ear. There’s an entire cohort of white males who grew up, for a few of their lives, beneath apartheid in South Africa. That’s vital.
The error that the media within the US has been making has been to give attention to Musk and to imagine that all of it radiates from him to Trump. In truth, there’s this complete cohort of white males who’ve but to return to phrases with democracy in South Africa, that means {that a} poor Black one that has no prospects in life has as a lot say politically relating to elections as does a really wealthy white particular person. That’s what it comes right down to.
They’ve misplaced their energy, which isn’t the identical factor as privilege. For instance, it’s nonetheless the case that once you have a look at company South Africa, 62.1 % of company leaders are white, and most of these are males. Solely 17.2 % are so-called Black African. And that’s 30 years for the reason that creation of democracy.
What do Trump’s insurance policies imply for the South African authorities?
They’re in for 4 years of hell with Trump. However it is usually, I’m hoping, a wake-up name for the present [African National Congress] authorities to take South Africa’s poor way more critically. The incompetence and the corruption of the previous 30 years have, in some methods, pushed the ANC off the upper ethical floor that it occupied when Mandela was president.
Trump’s determination to deal with the chief beneficiaries of apartheid as victims of a genocide going down solely in his head provides the ANC an opportunity to get again on that ethical excessive floor by reminding the world simply how felony apartheid was.
The one greatest mistake that the ANC made in the intervening time of transition in 1994 was to imagine that every one that you simply wanted to do to right the injustices of apartheid was to create a Black capitalist class. All that this did was create this huge patronage system that had authorities contracts at its heart. This made the Black bourgeoisie depending on authorities enterprise and inspired corruption.
Trying again during the last 30 years, we are able to see that considering that you can use authorities contracts to create a Black enterprise class was only a horrible concept. Satirically, the ANC copied the concept from successive apartheid governments, which used authorities patronage to construct an Afrikaner enterprise class. There’s not a single Afrikaner [billionaire in US dollars] in South Africa at present who didn’t get their begin on the again of apartheid authorities contracts.
Corruption is endemic, and it’s an enormous downside. In fact, the factor about corruption in South Africa that we neglect is that it’s non-racial, it cuts throughout racial strains. Since you want these cross-cultural and racial networks to maneuver cash round, to launder cash. It’s a nationwide enterprise.
Who has suffered due to the incompetence and the corruption? It’s all South Africans, particularly the poor. White Afrikaners as a bunch haven’t suffered completely.
How ought to we take into consideration Trump’s determination to welcome white Afrikaners as refugees within the context of his gutting of US refugee admissions broadly?
It’s bitterly ironic that he has stopped the processing of refugee functions for everybody besides this group of privileged white South Africans.
Marco Rubio kicked out South Africa’s ambassador to the US for mentioning the premise of Trump’s animus towards South Africa, however there is no such thing as a mistaking the white supremacist underpinnings of this. There isn’t a mistaking the crude racism on the coronary heart of this. You’ve gotten right here an administration that has and is punishing individuals who really want all the assistance they’ll get, who’re coming right here or are right here for higher alternatives for his or her youngsters and for themselves, however it would cease at nothing to take this very privileged group of white South Africans and switch them into refugees, when, in actual fact, they’re something however refugees.
I grew up beneath apartheid. My mom went to her grave with out having voted within the nation of her beginning. I grew up preventing the system.
I now discover myself in 2025 having to relitigate whether or not apartheid was flawed. That’s what this quantities to: taking individuals who benefited and proceed to learn from this terrible system referred to as apartheid and turning them into victims and refugees. What Trump is speaking is that apartheid was proper. That’s morally repugnant and simply plain obscene.
