Opinion This Word Means: Afrikaner

The group travelled from Johannesburg on a chartered flight sponsored by the US government on Sunday. Their applications were fast-tracked by the US administration, and they now face a direct pathway to US citizenship and are eligible for government benefits. However, they would need to find work and “accept entry level employment” according to an NPR report, with the possibility of advancing to higher-level jobs over time. A document cited by the report read, “Any credentials from your home country may not automatically transfer to the United States.”

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday discredited the claim that the Afrikaners were refugees, and said, “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.”

WHO ARE AFRIKANERS?

Afrikaners are white South African citizens who have descended from predominantly Dutch colonists who had first arrived in the mid-17th century. They speak a language called Afrikaans.

Today, Afrikaners in South Africa amount to 7% of the country’s population, but own 70% of the country’s land. The vast majority of them are farmers.

WHY DID TRUMP GIVE THEM REFUGEE STATUS?

The present move culminates from an executive order titled “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa” signed by Trump on February 7. The US President objected to the South African land expropriation law, passed on January 24, allowing the state to seize land without compensation for public purposes or in the public interest in certain circumstances. So far, no land has been seized under this measure.

In a social media post days before the order, Trump alleged this law was a “massive Human Rights VIOLATION”, and promised to “cut off all future funding to South Africa” until the matter had been investigated.

WHERE DO THE CLAIMS OF A ‘GENOCIDE’ COME FROM?

The allegations of a “genocide” and ill-treatment of Afrikaners have long been relayed by a fringe of conservative Afrikaners. Elon Musk, a white South African by birth (but not an Afrikaner) and Trump’s ally, has repeated these claims, accusing the SA government of having ‘racist’ land ownership laws.

Trump picked up on this during his first term as President, tweeting about “farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers” in South Africa in August 2018.

HOW ARE US-SOUTH AFRICA RELATIONS?

Relations between the two nations have been devolving over a few years: the US disliked Pretoria’s proximity to Russia and Iran in recent years, and disapproved of its December 2023 case against Israel, America’s closest ally, in the International Court of Justice (ICJ), claiming genocide against Palestinians in Gaza.

Following his February executive order, Trump suspended funding towards USAID, which South Africa largely benefited from, through the President’s Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief (PEPFAR), the world’s largest effort to combat HIV/AIDS. PEPFAR has been critical to South Africa’s fight against the disease – of the $320 million aid committed to the country by the US in 2024, more than $220 million went to support its HIV/AIDS program.

The US dismissed South African ambassador Ebrahim Rasool in March.