The head of South Africa’s largest agricultural association said white-owned farms are frequently invaded ‘by local politicians and radical groups.’
JOHANNESBURG—President Donald Trump’s decision to allow white Afrikaners to seek asylum in the United States from state-sponsored “racial discrimination,” “hateful rhetoric,” and “disproportionate violence” in South Africa has not gone down well in some quarters.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa described them as “cowards,” according to the BBC.
On May 22, during a meeting with Ramaphosa in the Oval Office, Trump presented what he said was evidence of this.
Showing printouts of news articles and footage of South African extremists calling for white farmers to be killed, Trump repeated the allegation that the South African government is confiscating white-owned land.
When Ramaphosa denied this, Trump maintained: “You do allow them to take land—and then when they take the land, they kill the white farmer, and when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them.
“You’re taking people’s land away from them, and those people, in many cases, are being executed. They’re being executed, and they happen to be white.”
The U.S. State Department has said it will continue to welcome Afrikaners who are “victims of unjust racial discrimination” and “able to articulate a past experience of persecution or fear of future persecution.”
South Africa’s International Relations Minister, Ronald Lamola, told The Epoch Times that Trump and his administration are “totally misguided” in offering asylum to Afrikaners.
“Who can provide proof of any persecution of a specific race in South Africa?” he asked. “There’s no proof. There’s no type of persecution or discrimination against any whites in South Africa.”
The Epoch Times has been told by a source connected to the U.S. Embassy in Johannesburg that many of the 8,000 Afrikaner applications for asylum reviewed so far contain “horrific details” of crimes committed against them or their close relatives.
“They believe these crimes happened to them because they are white,” said the source, requesting anonymity because he did not have permission to speak with the media.
“These crimes were documented in cases opened by the South African police, and in many cases the perpetrators have never been found. These people can’t get any information about what’s happened to their cases. It appears there have been no investigations.”
