For decades, some members of the White Afrikaner minorities have been trying to persuade anyone and anyone who listens to the real victims in South Africa after the apartheid.
They claimed the demands on mass killing their people and extensive land land from the government with black leadership that they insist that they are looking for retribution for the sins of the apartheid government led by the African. Their stories were false or very exaggeratedBut that did not prevent them from broadly reinforcing and repetition online.
The Afrikans, an ethnic group that came from European – primarily Dutch – colonizers, found its belongings in President Trump’s champion and led to the moment when few of them were able to imagine.
Mr. Trump on Friday stated the weight of US influence on the heat of question that Afrikanes were “victims of unfair racial discrimination”, publishing executive order Allow them to migrate to the United States as refugees and stop help in South Africa.
This step has met with horror in South Africa, a majority black nation, where more than 90 percent of the population come from racial groups persecuted by the racist regime of apartheid. These groups – black, colorful and Indian – remain statistically far behind the white minority in virtually every economic measure.
There have been ghostly murders of white farmers, the focus of African complaints, but police statistics suggest that they represent a very small share in the killing of the country.
It is not clear whether Mr. Trump’s interest in South Africa was influenced by Elon Musk, now one of his close advisors who was born there and raised and was hard critical for his government.
For Afrikanes, which make up about 4 percent of the population, Mr. Trump’s action was the culmination of years of international lobbying.
“What happened last night is probably the most important international event” in South Africa since 1994, when the Apartheid regime has lost the power of Ernst Roets, Executive Director of the Afrikan Foundation, a lawyer group, said on Saturday.
Over the years, Mr. Roets has made several trips to Washington to meet legislators and Think tanks, and in two weeks another long -planned journey will appear, he said. His organization did not meet any officials in the second Trump administration and was not directly involved in the Executive Code, he said. But they talked to people in orbit Mr. Trump and increased international awareness for their matter, he said.
“We did a few things wrong, but every community did some things wrong,” Roets said about Afrikanes. “We had this feeling that we were sacrificed and blamed for everything.” The fact that now there is recognition is something that I think many people will welcome. ”
South African government officials were somewhat blind by Mr. Trump’s order, learned about it through reports, said Ebrahim Rasool, South African ambassador to Washington.
Mr. Trump began to publicly focus on South Africa last Sunday with contributions to social media and commentary on reporters, suggesting that the country’s government had confiscated white ownership.
President Cyril Ramaphos from South Africa signed a law last month, allowing the government to attract private land in limited circumstances without compensating the owners. However, legal scholars argue that such seizures are subject to court control and in most cases the government compensates for the owner for land it acquires for public purposes.
Fans of the law argue that it is partly necessary to correct imbalances created by the history of white people who take control of most land, while black property has been limited by force and law.
After Mr. Trump made his comments, Mr. Musk asked Mr. Ramaphos in the X post: “Why do you openly racist ownership laws?”
Vincent Magwenya, spokesman for Mr. Ramaphosa, said, “We have never witnessed such an escalation of diplomatic tension,” and added that the problems Mr. Trump raised were “” attached to our country “.
Mr. Ramaphos talked to Mr. Musko last week and was “strong in that we do not have racist laws,” Mr. Magwenya said. But Mr Musk continued to insist That white people in South Africa are persecuted.
Kallie Kriel, CEO of Africor, Afrikaner Rights Organization, said the South African event was stolen by the American leader, especially his Accusation before the International Court that Israel committed genocide in Gaza.
While he refused to claim that the white South Africans were victims of extensive killing, He quoted several laws that Target Afrikans said. One law allows the government more control of the language of teaching in schools, which may vary from place to place, and some Afrikanes think it will reduce the use of Africans in the classroom.
“It is a direct threat of our cultural existence,” said Mr. Kriel.
Melanie Verwoerd, a former ambassador to South Africa, said that the focus on Afrikaner’s rights has overturned the history of people who benefited from the land from the 17th century from their ancestors taken from blacks. She said she speaks “like a white person and as an African,” he added that “categorically” false, that the white South Africans were persecuted.
“The vast majority of the poor in this country remain black,” said Mrs. Verwoerd. “If a group is treated badly, or if there is any human rights to be talked about, then it is actually blacks, not white.”
Last year, Mr. Ramaphos met with Mr. Musk to discuss his businesses, especially the Satellite Communications System Starink to South Africa. At these meetings, Mr. Musk did not comment on the fact that white people in South Africa were abusing, Mr. Magwenya said.
Instead, the main problem of Mr. Musk was the requirements of South Africa that foreign companies would advance some ownership of black South Africans or other historically disadvantaged groups, said Mr. Magwenya. Mr Musk told the President that he was afraid that it would determine the bad precedent for the other markets where Starlink was running, said Mr. Magwenya.
Mr. Musk is primarily English, not Afrikanera, descent. The tension is between white, English -speaking South Africans and Africans, who are often stereotyped as blue collar and less sophisticated.
Afrikans tend to have a grim view of the ground than the population in general. In a survey of the Human Science Research Council in 2023, 79 percent of Afrikanes said they were dissatisfied with the country’s democracy, and 47 percent said they belong to a group of discrimination – higher than any other group.
The White Population, now about 4.5 million, has been declining for decades-the statistics of South Africa, the official government statistical agency, have been a net migration of 700,000 white people since 1985 since 1985. However, there was no sign – at least so far – that Afrikanians tend to emigrate Masse into the United States.
Mr. Roets and the leaders of Afrifora said they wanted to stay in South Africa to improve it. They said they were planning to ask Trump’s administration rather than to reduce all funding to South Africa to invest in organizations that help the African communities.
The primary complaints of the Africans include faces violence on farms and that the government discriminates them with politics that are trying to prefer black South Africans in areas such as business and land ownership. However, advocates of racial policies claim that because the apartheid used a race to oppress and impoverish the black population, the rules are needed for the scale that realize the race.
“It’s not without all truth,” said Albert Grundlingh, an emeritus professor of history at Stellenbosch University and Afrikaner, about Afrikaner’s concern. “To say that as a group they are now oppressed and have no prospects at all, it’s exaggeration.”
Bennie van Zyl, CEO of Transvaal Agricultural Union in South Africa, said his colleagues Afriks wanted to be black farmers successful.
“But the government makes the soil a problem with a race,” he said. “It’s not a race for us – it’s a success.”
The report contributed Jeffrey Moyo From Harare, Zimbabwe.