CAPE TOWN, South Africa — U.S. President Donald Trump is considering prioritizing white South Africans in a dramatically decreased quota of refugees allowed into the United States this fiscal year. Trump is considering cutting the number of refugee places to as few as 7,500 from a target of 125,000 refugee admissions last year under the Biden administration, according to officials, with the places mostly going to members of the Afrikaner white minority from South Africa. The figures for the fiscal year that began Oct. 1 have not been finalized, according to two people familiar with the situation who were granted anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss it with the media. The U.S. says Afrikaners are being discriminated against by their Black-led government, are the victims of race-based violence, and are having their land seized. The South African government strongly denies those claims, calling them “completely false” and the result of misinformation. Some white South Africans have already arrived in the U.S. The Trump administration announced a new scheme earlier this year to fast-track the relocation of Afrikaner farmers to the U.S. while suspending the refugee program from other parts of the world. Around 70 white South Africans were relocated to the U.S. in two groups in May and June in what U.S. officials described as the start of the new program. They said more would be relocated. The issue of white South Africans was at the centre of a tense meeting between Trump and South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House in May, when Trump confronted his counterpart in the Oval Office with baseless claims of widespread violence against white farmers. Afrikaners are descendants of colonial settlers Afrikaners are the descendants of mainly Dutch and French colonial settlers who first arrived in South Africa in the 17th century. They are just one of South Africa’s white minorities, which also include South Africans of British descent. Afrikaners speak Afrikaans, a language derived from Dutch that is widely spoken and recognized as one of South Africa’s 11 official languages. Afrikaners were at the heart of the apartheid system of racial segregation in South Africa that lasted from 1948 until 1994, when Nelson Mandela was elected as the country’s first Black president in the first democratic, all-race elections. Their leading role in apartheid has led to some lingering racial tensions, but Afrikaners have generally embraced their country’s new multiracial democracy just like most other South Africans. There are now around 2.7 million Afrikaners in South Africa’s population of 62 million, which is more than 80 per cent Black. They are represented in every facet of South African life and are successful business leaders, some of the country’s best-known sportsmen and women, and also serve in government. Claims of persecution Conservative commentators in the U.S. have in recent years amplified complaints by some Afrikaner lobby groups in South Africa that they are being persecuted by their Black-led government. South African-born billionaire Elon Musk has backed those claims and accused the South African government of being racist against whites. The lobby groups cited South Africa’s long-standing affirmative action laws which seek to advance opportunities for Black South Africans who were oppressed under apartheid. They have also claimed that a small number of violent attacks on white farmers are racially motivated. They say a new law passed by the government allowing it to expropriate land without compensation is further evidence that it wants to remove whites from their land. The South African government denied the claims, saying farm attacks account for a tiny percentage of South Africa’s overall high violent crime rates and all South Africans are impacted by crime. It said the new expropriation law is aimed at redistributing land that is not being put to use to poor Black South Africans. Trump’s executive order Trump has taken up the claims of persecution and issued an executive order in February accusing the South African government of “egregious actions” and rights violations against the Afrikaner minority. The executive order instructed U.S. agencies including the State Department and the Department of Homeland Security to prioritize humanitarian relief and the relocation of Afrikaners to the U.S. under the United States Refugee Admissions Program. It’s not clear how many South Africans have applied for refugee status, and the Afrikaner lobby groups critical of the South African government have called for Afrikaners to stay in their country. The South African government has refused to recognize them as refugees, saying they aren’t being persecuted but it also won’t stop them leaving. The U.S. has extended the refugee program to other racial minorities in South Africa, meaning South Africans of Indian or mixed-race heritage could also apply if they can show they have been discriminated against by affirmative action laws or other policies. There are significant minorities of those groups in South Africa. The U.S. Embassy in South Africa said last month that there was a “sizable volume of submissions” to work through, without saying exactly how many. ___ Gerald Imray, The Associated Press
