Groups representing South Africa’s white minority have declined President Donald Trump‘s offer of refugee status and resettlement in the United States.
Trump’s plan was part of a broader response to South Africa’s land reform policy, which he claimed was confiscating land and treating certain classes of people “very badly.”
However, the white minority groups, including AfriForum and the Solidarity Movement, expressed appreciation for Trump’s recognition of their concerns but politely declined his offer, stating that they are “going nowhere” and wish to remain in South Africa.
The South African government has denied there are any concerted attacks on white farmers and has said that Trump’s description of the new land law is full of misinformation and distortions.
Afrikaners are descended from mainly Dutch, but also French and German colonial settlers who first arrived in South Africa more than 300 years ago. At the moment, Whites comprise around 7 percent of South Africa’s population of 62 million.
‘We are not going anywhere.’ On Saturday, two of the most prominent groups representing Afrikaners said they would not be taking up Trump’s offer of resettlement in the US.
“Our members work here, and want to stay here, and they are going to stay here,” said Dirk Hermann, chief executive of the Afrikaner trade union Solidarity, which says it represents around 2 million people. “We are committed to build a future here. We are not going anywhere.”
On the other hand, Kallie Kriel, the CEO of the Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum, said: “We have to state categorically: We don’t want to move elsewhere.”
But the portrayal of Afrikaners as a downtrodden group that needed to be saved would surprise most South Africans.
“It is ironic that the executive order makes provision for refugee status in the US for a group in South Africa that remains among the most economically privileged,” South Africa’s Foreign Ministry said.
It also criticized the Trump administration’s own policies, saying the focus on Afrikaners came “while vulnerable people in the US from other parts of the world are being deported and denied asylum despite real hardship.”
There was “a campaign of misinformation and propaganda” aimed at South Africa, the ministry said.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa’s spokesperson said: “South Africa is a constitutional democracy. We value all South Africans, Black and white. The assertion that Afrikaners face arbitrary deprivation and, therefore, need to flee the country of their birth is an assertion devoid of all truth.
Meanwhile, Whites in South Africa still generally have a much better standard of living than Blacks more than 30 years after the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994. Despite being a small minority, whites own around 70 percent of South Africa’s private farmland.
Source: Arab New
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