Tens of thousands of white Afrikaners want to move to the United States to escape alleged racial persecution in South Africa.
PRETORIA—The lines creasing Wilhelm Snyman’s sun-scorched face make him look much older than 46.
“It’s also the stress of the past six years that has made me look like an ou toppie [old man],” he said near the United States embassy in Pretoria.
Snyman lost his job in the computer industry in 2019 and said he’s been unable to find permanent work since then.
“So one day the boss called me in and told me he had to retrench me and some other white guys. He had to replace us with black employees because of the government’s affirmative action policies,” he told The Epoch Times. “Fortunately, my wife still has a job—but it’s humiliating as a man to sit at home every day doing nothing, and just keeping busy with an odd job here and there.”
Groups of Afrikaners have been gathering regularly at the embassy since President Donald Trump signed an executive order on Feb. 7.
It cut American aid to South Africa, accusing President Cyril Ramaphosa’s government of “race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation” and a “shocking disregard of its citizens’ rights.”
Trump also suggested the United States should help resettle Afrikaners, the descendants of mainly Dutch, French, and German settlers who came to South Africa in the 1600s. His order said his administration would “promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees” for those “who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.”
Snyman said: “I’ll do what it takes to get to America, to build a new life for my family. There, we won’t be despised because we’re white.”
Trump said policies in South Africa are “designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business” and alleged that “hateful rhetoric and government actions [are] fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.”
Ramaphosa responded that the government’s policies are designed to redress the imbalances of South Africa’s apartheid past, when white people were favored in all sectors of society. He denied that white residents are being targeted in a campaign of racial violence.
