Johannesburg, South Africa – On a cold Sunday night in Johannesburg, OR Tambo Worldwide Airport was stuffed with vacationers and travellers getting into and exiting South Africa’s busiest airport.
On one aspect of the worldwide departures corridor, a couple of dozen individuals queued – their trollies piled with baggage, journey pillows and youngsters’s blankets – as they waited to board a constitution flight to Washington Dulles Worldwide Airport in america.
Dressed casually and comfortably for the 13-hour journey that will observe, the group – most younger, all white – talked amongst themselves whereas avoiding onlookers. Though they blended into the bustling terminal round them, these weren’t odd travellers. They had been Afrikaners leaving South Africa to be refugees in Donald Trump’s America.
When Charl Kleinhaus first utilized for refugee resettlement within the US earlier this 12 months, he instructed officers he had been threatened and that folks tried to say his property.
The 46-year-old, who claimed to personal a farm in Limpopo, South Africa’s northernmost province, was not required to current proof of those threats or present particulars relating to when the alleged incidents occurred.
On Sunday, he joined dozens of others accepted by the Trump administration as a part of a pilot programme granting asylum to individuals from the Afrikaner group – descendants of primarily Dutch colonisers that led the brutal apartheid regime for almost 5 a long time.
The Trump administration claims white individuals face discrimination in South Africa – a rustic the place they make up some 7 % of the inhabitants however personal greater than 70 % of the land and occupy the vast majority of high administration positions.
“I need you all to know that you’re actually welcome right here and that we respect what you’ve gotten needed to take care of these previous few years,” US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau instructed Kleinhaus and the others once they landed on the Dulles Worldwide in Virginia.
“We respect the lengthy custom of your individuals and what you’ve gotten completed through the years,” he mentioned on Monday.
Chatting with a journalist on the airport, Kleinhaus mentioned he by no means anticipated “this land expropriation factor to go to this point” in South Africa.
He was referring to the lately handed Expropriation Act, which permits the South African authorities to, in distinctive circumstances, take land for public use with out compensation. Pretoria says the measure is geared toward redressing apartheid injustices, as Black South Africans who make up greater than 80 % of the inhabitants nonetheless personal simply 4 % of the land.
South African officers say the legislation has not resulted in any land grabs. There’s additionally no document of Kleinhaus’s property being expropriated.
Kleinhaus was unaffected by any threats and the federal government was unaware of anybody who may need threatened his property, Minister within the Presidency Khumbudzo Ntshavheni instructed Al Jazeera.
“The individuals of South Africa haven’t been affected by the expropriation of land. There’s no proof. None of them are affected by any farm murders both,” the minister emphasised.
Greater than 30 years after the top of apartheid, white individuals nonetheless personal the vast majority of farmland, whereas Black South Africans who make up 80 % of the inhabitants personal simply 4 % (File: Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters)
Discredited ‘genocide’ claims
In February, when Trump signed an govt order granting refugee standing to Afrikaners, he cited broadly discredited claims that their land was being seized and that they had been being brutally killed in South Africa.
On Monday, Trump once more claimed that Afrikaners had been victims of a “genocide” – an accusation South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and different specialists keep is predicated on lies.
“Farmers are being killed,” Trump instructed reporters. “White farmers are being brutally killed, and the land is being confiscated in South Africa.”
Ramaphosa has additionally debunked claims that the group who left this week confronted any persecution at dwelling.
“They’re leaving as a result of they don’t want to embrace the democratic transformation unfolding in South Africa,” he mentioned.
For 60-year-old Sam Busa, watching Kleinhaus and the 48 different South Africans depart to be resettled within the US was a hopeful second.
Busa, who has additionally utilized for asylum, is ready in anticipation for an interview that will qualify her for resettlement. She has begun promoting extra home goods in anticipation of her new life within the US.
The semi-retired businesswoman has been on the forefront of efforts – by a web site known as Amerikaners – encouraging Afrikaners to take an curiosity within the US provide to grant refugee standing on the grounds that they face racial persecution in South Africa.
When requested how she has skilled persecution due to her race, Busa recounted an incident the place she was held at gunpoint at her dwelling in Johannesburg – the business capital of South Africa and some of the harmful cities on the earth.
She later moved to KwaZulu-Natal on the nation’s east coast, the place she ran a enterprise that supplied providers to the federal government.
When requested whether or not she believed she was focused due to her race or if she was merely a sufferer of frequent crime, Busa asserted it didn’t matter.
She didn’t really feel protected, she mentioned. “I’m not overly delicate. After I watch Julius Malema singing about killing the Boer, this can be very terrifying.”
Malema, the far-left chief of the Financial Freedom Fighters (EFF) political celebration, typically sings a well-known anti-apartheid tune, Kill the Boer (Boer which means farmer in Afrikaans), which the courts have dominated will not be hate speech or an incitement to violence.
Demonstrators maintain placards in assist of US President Donald Trump’s stance towards what he calls racist legal guidelines, land expropriation, and farm assaults, outdoors the US Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, February 15, 2025 (Siphiwe Sibeko/Reuters)
‘Persecution’
For Busa, very like Kleinhaus, new laws handed to bolster racial transformation, which incorporates having particular hiring targets for employment fairness, has been “the straw that broke the camel’s again”.
“Expropriation with out compensation is a large problem, together with the modification to employment fairness,” she mentioned, restating her perception that white individuals don’t have a future in South Africa.
“It’s coming laborious and quick, and it’s changing into clear to (white) South Africans that we battle with fears of dwelling invasion. I don’t stay on a farm, however there are large fears due to the fixed menace of crime. It has turn into clear to white South Africans; it’s not disguised,” she claimed.
The narrative of concern is prevalent amongst these engaged within the refugee programme even though a number of specialists have debunked the assertion that they had been victims of racially motivated assaults and never frequent crime.
South Africa sees about 19,000 murders a 12 months. In keeping with information from the police, most victims of rural crime are Black, with proof displaying that white farmers should not disproportionately being killed.
In the meantime, many contributors within the US’s Afrikaner refugee resettlement programme don’t even stay on farms; many are city dwellers, in keeping with Minister Ntshavheni.
Katia Beedan, who lives in Cape City, can be anticipating resettlement within the US. She instructed Al Jazeera that refugee hopefuls wouldn’t have to show racial persecution however merely articulate it.
“For me, it’s racial persecution and political persecution,” she mentioned about her causes for wanting to go away South Africa.
The copywriter-turned-life coach pointed to racial transformation legal guidelines concentrating on employment fairness and land expropriation, which she believes the federal government is “overwhelming us with”, as a key cause for her need to flee.
Nonetheless, many different South Africans see sections of the Afrikaner group – together with their right-wing foyer teams like AfriForum that first pushed the false narrative of a “white genocide” – as struggling to exist equally in a rustic the place they had been as soon as thought of superior due to their race.
“I feel AfriForum is battling the fact of being odd,” social justice activist and South Africa’s former public protector, Thuli Madonsela, instructed native TV channel, Newzroom Afrika, in March.
“The brand new South Africa requires all of us to be odd, whereas colonialism and apartheid made white individuals particular individuals.
“I feel some white individuals … (are) searching for to reverse the wheel and discover cause to be particular once more. They appear to have discovered an ally within the American president,” she mentioned.
US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau, proper, greets Afrikaner refugees from South Africa, Monday, Might 12, 2025, at Dulles Worldwide Airport (Julia Demaree Nikhinson/AP)
‘Absurd and ridiculous’
In February, as Trump expedited efforts to resettle Afrikaners within the US, he was closing off his nation’s refugee programme to different asylum seekers from war-torn and famine-stricken elements of the world.
For Loren Landau from the African Centre for Migration and Society on the College of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, the Afrikaner refugee relocation is “absurd and ridiculous”.
“They haven’t been welcomed as vacationers or work allow holders, however as refugees. The concept of a refugee system is to guard those that can’t be safeguarded by their very own states and who concern persecution or violence due to who they’re or their membership in a social group. Can Afrikaners make that case?” he requested.
Though “there are individuals in South Africa who discriminate towards them,” and Afrikaners now “have much less privilege and safety than throughout the apartheid period”, it can’t be mentioned that that is indicative of state coverage, he mentioned, including that many various persons are robbed, killed, and face discrimination in South Africa.
“Are they (Afrikaners) specifically victimised due to who they’re? Completely not!” Landau added.
He mentioned all statistics on land possession, revenue, and schooling ranges point out that South Africa’s white inhabitants far outstrips others: “They’re nonetheless by far within the high strata of South African society. Nobody is taking their land. Nobody is taking their automobiles.”
Even fringe teams which will have known as for land grabs have executed little to enact their threats, observers word.
Nonetheless, for Busa, that doesn’t matter. “I concern for my kids. You by no means know when the EFF decides they need you useless. It’s not a rustic I need to stay in,” she mentioned. The EFF has mentioned those that resolve to go away South Africa ought to have their citizenship revoked.
Confronted with the implications of this case, the federal government is contemplating whether or not those that exit as refugees may simply return to the nation. Ramaphosa is predicted to debate the continued matter with Trump at a gathering within the US subsequent week.
In the meantime, for the Afrikaners now within the US, most will settle in Texas, with others in New York, Idaho, Iowa and North Carolina, whereas the federal government helps them discover work and lodging.
They’ll maintain refugee standing for one 12 months, after which they will apply for a US inexperienced card to make them everlasting residents. On the identical time, the Afrikaner resettlement programme stays open to others who need to apply.
When Kleinhaus and his group arrived within the US on Monday, that they had smiles on their faces as they met officers and waved US flags.
But, for South Africa’s president, their resettlement within the US marks “a tragic second for them” – and one thing he believes might not final.
“As South Africans, we’re resilient. We don’t run away from our issues,” he mentioned at an agricultural exhibition in Free State province on Monday.
“When you have a look at all nationwide teams in our nation, Black and white, they’ve stayed on this nation as a result of it’s our nation.
“I can wager you that they (the Afrikaners who left) can be again quickly as a result of there is no such thing as a nation like South Africa.”
