Second chance for Amerikaner ‘refugees'
The first group of Afrikaners from South Africa to arrive for resettlement in the US. Picture: Saul Loeb / AFP
The granting of refugee status to a small group of white Afrikaners by the US – an offer that has been extended to include members of other racial minorities who can credibly demonstrate that they are being discriminated against – will have profoundly negative implications for SA.
It puts the ANC-led government in a quandary about a slew of controversial legislation regarding hot-button issues such as race quotas, black economic empowerment, property and language rights and hate speech.
Trump placed marker on SA
Beyond the silly hyperbole about genocide and rampant land seizures, the important fact is the world's most powerful nation has laid down a marker that there are indeed 'bad things happening in South Africa', to quote US President Donald Trump, and that these amount to racial discrimination.
While the local media childishly insists on putting the word refugee in quotation marks whenever they refer to those going to the US under Trump's executive order, that word is now a juristic definition of their status.
It's a hugely important legal distinction with far-reaching implications. It not only opens the door to many thousands of minority-group citizens – not just farmers, not just Afrikaners, not just whites – fleeing to the US, but will undoubtedly influence other immigration authorities.
WATCH: SA 'refugees' leave for US
'Amerikaner refugees' vs South Africans
For the moment, however, the matter is playing on a much pettier level. Who would have thought that the departure of fewer than five dozen Afrikaners could cause such an outpouring of undeserved media vitriol and government anger?
It's especially odd given that an estimated 1-2 million people have emigrated unremarked upon since the ANC took power.
The national ego has been badly dented and it transpires that hell hath no fury like South Africans scorned.
Even our normally imperturbable president has given public vent. Cyril Ramaphosa last week lambasted the group as 'cowards' who would 'very soon' be scuttling back to South Africa with their tails between their legs.
ALSO READ: Trump administration slams church for refusing to resettle white South Africans in America
Will the Amerikaners get caught in the Trump vs ANC crossfire?
Meanwhile, everyone is hard at work seeking scapegoats. Afrikaner civic action group AfriForum, for one, is firmly in the crosshairs. The Amerikaners, as they've derisively been dubbed, hopefully realise things will be hard.
They are bit players who have strayed into the spotlight in a piece of political theatre between the ANC and Trump.
They should know, too, that back home their every failure will be magnified and gloated over, their every success minimised. It's a misguided response by the government and its cheerleaders.
The reality is that SA, if it continues on the ANC's present course, will experience a massive exodus of human capital it can ill afford to lose and those leaving in future will mainly, but by no means only, be minorities.
However, all the quibbling about whether the Amerikaners are just wallowing in victimhood or genuinely seeking refuge mean less than the smug commentators assume and the dishonest politicians pretend.
Yes, there are gradations of agency, of volition, across the spectrum of emigrant, exile and refugee. But contradictions abound.
There are penniless, footsore emigrants and plump, wellshod refugees. Perhaps the thing that they most have in common is heartache.
ALSO READ: Afrikaner claims of persecution are a fat lie
What lies ahead for Amerikaner refugees
While some may leave the land of their forefathers with a sense of relief – a smile on their lips and a song in their hearts – in my experience, they're relatively few.
To depart this South Africa, the ancient land that magically weaves through our present hopes, fears, triumphs and defeats, is not easy.
To leave behind permanently the land that has forged one's identity and in doing so become part of one's soul, is heartrending. It's a death of sorts. But also, if one is fortunate, it can be a do-over, a second chance, or even a rebirth.
NOW READ: Victory for asylum seekers: High Court declares parts of Refugees Act unconstitutional
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