White South African ‘refugees'? The jokes write themselves

The Guardian

21-05-2025

Hello and welcome to The Long Wave. On Wednesday, the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, will visit Donald Trump in the White House. I spoke to Jonathan Jansen, a professor of education in Stellenbosch, about the tense backdrop to the trip, and the reaction in South Africa to Trump granting white farmers refugee rights in the US.
Since the early days of his presidency, Donald Trump has made white farmers in South Africa one of his pet projects. It is an obsession that dates to his first term, where he amplified allegations by some Afrikaners that they are victims of 'mass killings' and suffer from violence and discrimination by vengeful Black South Africans. There is nothing to support this claim. And yet, in March, Trump expelled the South African ambassador to the US, cut off aid and extended an invitation for political asylum to white farmers, even as the US all but halts all refugee admissions to the country. The first of those white South African 'refugees' arrived in the US two weeks ago.
The source of this odd fixation is those around Trump, who 'doesn't have a sense of the world outside the United States' Jansen tells me, adding: 'To know about South Africa, let alone its politics, [the president] must have whisperers,' who are telling him that there is a 'white genocide'. Jansen suspects one of those is the South African-born Elon Musk, who has 'a grievance against the country'.
A defiant South African government
Jansen believes South Africa's hard line against Israel has fuelled animosity in Washington. Taking the Israeli government to the international court of justice 'is not cool in the world of Trump'. I suggest a provocative factor may also have been how uncompromising and measured the South African government has been on the issue of white farmers when goaded by Trump. 'This is true,' Jansen says. 'Ramaphosa, with all his faults – and they are many – is a man of restraint.'
Earlier this year, the South African government said it would not engage in 'counterproductive megaphone diplomacy' after social media posts by Trump alleged that Pretoria was seizing land from white farmers. South Africa passed a law in 2024 that states land 'expropriation may not be exercised unless the expropriating authority has without success attempted to reach an agreement with the owner or holder of a right in property for the acquisition thereof on reasonable terms'. Decades after the dismantling of apartheid, white people make up 7% of the South African population and own at least half of the land.
Small but stubborn residues of white supremacy
Despite the media focus on the issue, Jansen calls for some perspective. He says that some white South Africans who claim racial discrimination are a small group of people who nurse an inflated sense of resentment because they still cannot accept that apartheid is over. 'There are grievances with a Black government, which is very hard for some of my white brothers and sisters to accept, even after 30 years.'
Jansen says if one is to consider violent crime, 'more Black people die than white people, even as a proportion of the population. Make no mistake, these are white supremacists who are drawn to a white supremacist. Their capacity for reflection is not very high.' Jansen predicts the promise of life in the US will quickly sour. 'I'll make a bet with you that many of them will be back here in no time.'
'South Africans regard it as a joke'
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I ask him about the view from South Africa, and how the beliefs of those who claim white discrimination resonate. 'South Africans, Black and white, regard it as a joke. It's a huge joke here.' Does it not touch a nerve in a country that has such a heavy legacy of racism? 'Not really,' Jansen says. 'I did a straw poll on my X account, and the majority said: 'Ignore the bastards'. Forty-nine people took Trump up on his offer to find asylum in the US. 'It's not like a million people. It's a handful, many of whom are not actually farmers, taking advantage of a white racist calling them home. 'Don't pay attention to them.' That is the major response.'
But there is still a bitter irony to the whole affair, Jansen observes. If these were Black people, the apartheid government would have given them a one-way ticket to leave and not ever return. 'We don't do that. The very people who were repressing us under apartheid are using the freedom of a new democracy to be able to do things that were unthinkable, even as white people, under the apartheid government.'
'A slap in the face'
Despite the understanding in South Africa that the issue of white discrimination is a political stunt, Jansen notes the galling hypocrisy of it all, considering the effort that Black South Africans made to ensure peace after apartheid. 'What riles is that you're giving attention to people who for 350 years were oppressing us. My argument is: don't get into a tizzy. But I also regard it quite seriously as a slap in the face for Black South Africans.'
The narrative that Black people now hold power over whites is a fiction that obscures the enduring suffering of apartheid. 'Nothing has really changed for Black South Africans apart from the right to vote,' Jansen says. 'Many still live in shacks. They still suffer food insecurity. They still have the highest rates of unemployment. We made these enormous concessions during the negotiations to avert a war under Mandela. Whites here would be treated, as they always were, as fellow citizens as opposed to colonisers. And then, on top of all of that, [there was] a truth and reconciliation commission during which people got away with murder – literally.'
On a personal level, Jansen says he will not hide the fact that he feels hurt. But there is comfort in the fact that 'among ordinary Black South Africans, they don't think this is worth spending time on … and the overwhelming majority of white South Africans really just want to make this country work. One sees this moment for what it is. There is another reality out there.'
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