Who Are the Afrikaners Seeking Refuge in US?

President Donald Trump raised the issue of the killings of white South Africans in that country during an Oval Office visit by its president this week.

It came as the Trump administration expedited the refugee claims of some white South Africans who feel they are no longer safe in their black-majority home country.

As of May 8, the U.S. government had granted 59 Afrikaners refugee status, and the State Department has received 8,000 inquiries. 

Secretary of State Marco Rubio defended the Trump administration’s actions when he appeared before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on Tuesday.

“Can you have a different standard based upon the color of somebody’s skin? Would that be acceptable?” Sen. Tim Kaine, D-Va., asked the secretary in what some saw as a leading question.

“I’m not the one arguing that. Apparently you are, because you don’t like the fact that they’re white and that’s why they’re coming,” Rubio replied in the contentious exchange. 

According to the 2022 census, there are 4.5 million white South Africans living in South Africa comprising about 7% of the country’s population. A majority are called Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch settlers who began immigrating from Europe to South Africa in earnest in the 1600s. The rest are generally descendants of British settlers.

Many Afrikaners speak their own language called Afrikaans, which derives in large part from Dutch, but also incorporates words from African languages. A significant number also know English as a second language.

Those white South Africans who are religious are primarily Christian and are members of various Dutch Reformed, Catholic, Anglican, and Methodist churches. A minority are Jewish.

Famous South Africans who have immigrated to America include Elon Musk, actress Charlize Theron, and David Sacks, a billionaire Silicon Valley investor. Both Musk and Sacks were major supporters of Trump’s 2024 presidential campaign.

Today, some Afrikaners are infamously known for having either participated in or having descended from those who participated in a racist system of brutal segregation, racist economic deprivation, and vicious persecution, including violence and disenfranchisement of black South Africans, known as apartheid (literally “separateness” in Afrikaans).

The evil of apartheid is a vast topic that one article cannot cover in depth. To take just three examples, the apartheid regime presided over political assassinations including that of anti-apartheid activist Steve Biko, required black South Africans to carry internal passbooks that dictated their restricted rights, and prohibited interracial marriage.

Apartheid is generally viewed to have been institutionalized after the 1948 South African general election. A Dutch Reformed minister, Daniel Francois (D.F.) Malan, was elected prime minister of South Africa, and under his political rule, the formalized system of state-mandated segregation was implemented. Malan’s political party, known as the National Party or Nationalist Party, would rule South Africa until the end of apartheid in the 1990s. 

Since the dismantling of apartheid, white South Africans have no longer governed South Africa. The African National Congress, which was established to advocate for the rights of black South Africans when they were under oppression, has governed the country since 1994. Now-deceased South African President Nelson Mandela, a Nobel Peace Prize laureate, led the African National Congress from 1991 to 1997. Since 2024, the African National Congress has governed in a coalition government with several other political parties, including the Democratic Alliance, a left-wing party that has white African leadership. 

The African National Congress has been criticized for failing to stem corruption in the 30 years it governed the country and for aligning itself with terrorism-sponsoring regimes such as Iran’s. The African National Congress has also supported the boycott, divest, and sanctions movement against Israel. 

South Africa ranked 82 out of the 180 nations scored by Transparency International’s 2024 corruption perception index. For context, Denmark held the top spot on the list as the least corrupt country in the world, while the United States was ranked 28.

In recent years, the African National Congress has been criticized domestically for failing to stop the killing of white South African farmers, with at least 3,000 having been killed since 1994. New fears have been stoked after the South African government passed a land expropriation law in January that allows it to confiscate an individual’s property without compensation. 

“No white person in their right mind would stay in this country,” said Jaco van der Merwe, 52, told The New York Times. Van der Merwe is a naturalized American citizen and the president and CEO of Astec Industries, a company that specializes in equipment for infrastructure projects.

But South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has criticized white South Africans for fleeing the nation.

“When you run away, you are a coward,” Ramaphosa said to reporters during his U.S. visit.

The post Who Are the Afrikaners Seeking Refuge in US? appeared first on The Daily Signal.