Latest news with #Afrikaners
Times
an hour ago
- Politics
- Times
Side by side, a slum and gated community show South Africa's widening gulf
Upturned beer crates serve as stepping stones through a maze of muddy walkways in the foul-smelling slum where Irene Jubeju stands at the door of a tin shack. Inside, her three-year-old grandson, Lucobo, lies on a bed. A single lightbulb hangs from the ceiling. 'It's not nice to live here. I would go to America very happily if President Trump would take us,' Jubeju said, nodding sadly at her possessions: the bed, a single white plastic chair and a cupboard containing a bag of rice and two tins of pilchards. Further along the alley, Patricia, a mother of six, waits to fill three large plastic bottles at a standpipe. 'At night there's shooting and screaming. You can't go out. We're not safe.' She added: 'You must call Mr Donald Trump and tell him to invite me and my family to America.' Millions of South Africans watched on their phones last month as Trump harangued Cyril Ramaphosa, his South African counterpart, over claims that the white Afrikaner minority were facing 'genocide'. The American president has granted refugee status to several dozen Afrikaners. To the slum-dwellers of Masiphumelele, they seem like the lucky ones. 'My daughter said to me the other day, 'Mum, maybe God has his favourites',' Patricia recalled. 'Those white farmers are probably right to be afraid of criminal attacks on their farms, but I think our case is just as deserving.' Three decades after Nelson Mandela became South Africa's first black president, the country once reviled for its former apartheid system remains one of the most unequal in the world. Nothing better exemplifies the gulf than Masiphumelele. The warren of ramshackle dwellings, where 65,000 people are crammed into an area of less than a quarter of a square mile, is bordered by a wall beyond which lies another world, a lakeside idyll of swimming pools and manicured lawns. 'People were separate before,' said Jeremy Mathers, a retired naval submarine engineer who has lived for years with his wife in this exclusive gated community guarded by security professionals. 'Thirty years later they still are,' he added, as a black maid swept his sitting room floor. He has watched from this comfortable abode with a lakeside pontoon and a swimming pool as the township next door has expanded over the years, along with his own gated community. He does not need burglar alarms or bars on his windows: the estate is wired with cameras monitored by a team that conducts regular patrols. 'That fact that it's necessary is one of the tragedies of South Africa. There's massive unemployment, and people have to live,' Mathers said. 'The residents here know they live in a bubble isolated form the real world out there and probably feel a little guilty about this. But security of family and property trumps all other considerations.' Down the road, slum-dwellers vie with baboons to rummage through rubbish from another well-off white enclave. Others hand out slips of paper asking for jobs as nannies or nursemaids. 'I am good with children and animal friendly,' said one note thrust through my car window at a traffic light. In a state hollowed out by flagrant corruption, the deepening crisis of crime and unemployment has made age-old warnings of national breakdown feel disturbingly plausible. Wealthy white South Africans began leaving the country decades ago. 'There are 35 dollar billionaires born here who no longer live here, and I can name hundreds of South Africans worth $100 million to $900 million who are living overseas and not coming back to invest,' said Rob Hersov, 65, a billionaire who left in the 1980s but has returned. He accuses Mandela's heirs in government of 'stealing the country to death' and promoting violence against whites. Claims of 'genocide' have been circulating for more than a decade, with vocal support from Trump's erstwhile ally, the South African-born billionaire Elon Musk. • Fact check: Are white farmers being killed in South Africa? Trump took up the matter last month when he hosted Ramaphosa and several officials in a live-streamed Oval Office meeting, playing a video that showed Julius Malema, leader of the far-left Economic Freedom Fighters party, and former president Jacob Zuma singing an apartheid-era struggle song called Kill the Boer. Trump claimed it was inciting 'white genocide'. One of those in the meeting was John Steenhuisen, 49, South Africa's white agriculture minister and leader of the governing coalition Democratic Alliance party. He said he had consulted Lord Mandelson, the British ambassador to Washington, the evening before the encounter with Trump. 'He gave me sound advice: 'Don't answer back, don't contradict him.' But nothing could have prepared us for the dimming of the lights and the TV screen coming on. My heart jumped into my throat. I thought, 'What's happening now?' ' Steenhuisen sprang to the defence of the coalition government, which had been formed specifically to keep the hate-filled militants depicted in the film out of power. The majority of white commercial farmers wanted to stay in South Africa and 'make it work', he said. Speaking in his Cape Town office last week, he said claims of 'genocide' against whites were 'completely false'. South Africa suffers from appalling crime and murder rates: an average of 60 people are killed daily in this country of 63 million, about 7 per cent of whose inhabitants are white. Down the road, Louis Botha, the Afrikaner war hero and South Africa's first prime minister, sits on horseback, cast in bronze outside parliament. 'We have a statue of Queen Victoria too,' Steenhuisen noted. In the first quarter of this year, there were six murders on farms. One victim was a white farmer and the rest were black, according to police. Since 1990, 1,363 white farmers have been murdered — an average of 40 a year. Grant Butler, a primary school headmaster in Port Elizabeth, recalled a tragic 2018 case when the home of a farming family with two boys in his school was targeted for robbery. 'The mother was raped, the father wasn't home at the time,' he said. 'I remember her telling me she couldn't sleep any more. The family needed a new start. They moved to Australia.' The countryside the family once inhabited outside the city is cradled by gentle hills and distant ridgelines that shelter rows of trees from which oranges hang like golden lamps in a green night. One of the region's biggest producers, Hannes de Waal, 58, who runs Sundays River Citrus Company, dismissed the 'white genocide' claim as 'the biggest nonsense under the sun', arguing that farm attacks are the result of common criminality, not an organised campaign. Sitting at the end of a long table in his headquarters, he called 'proper' Afrikaners 'tough and resilient', adding: 'Going to another country as a refugee is crazy.' That did not mean farmers felt no anxiety, he added. The earth is moist and red in the orange groves, the air rich with the scent of sun-warmed rind. Yet beneath the postcard tranquillity, tension hums like an underground current. 'The only question — and it's always in the back of your mind — is when is it going to happen to you?' said Hennie Ehlers, 65, head of 2Rivers Citrus Company, further up the valley. 'You lock all the doors once you're inside at night. You don't leave anything open. You don't know what's going to happen. It's become a way of life.' Rising unemployment and desperation have raised fears that crime will increase. 'People see the gold on the trees and want a share of that gold without realising how much effort, capital and sweat went into producing it,' Ehlers said. The affable silver-haired figure is quick to acknowledge that farm murder victims are not only white. Sitting next to him was his black business partner, Khaya Katoo, and his wife, Crewelyn, who run a farm in the valley. 'These farm murders cut across race,' said Katoo, 50. 'We've got the same security cameras, alarms and smart tech systems at my house as they do here. Everyone is affected. Everyone is a potential victim.' He blamed unemployment for the attacks. 'The government has failed to deal with it. There's a huge gap between the black elite and the poor. The rich got richer without pulling the poor up with them. There's not much of a black middle class.' For the township dwellers of Masiphumelele, though, the daily struggle is not to thrive but to survive. 'Mandela wanted us to love each other,' said Patricia, the mother of six, of the freedom fighter turned president. 'He would be rotating in his grave. He'd cry if he could see what's happening to us.'
The Guardian
3 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘We are privileged': liberal Afrikaners reject Trump's ‘white genocide' claims
For some white Afrikaner South Africans, Donald Trump's offer of refugee status in the US has been seen as a godsend. For others, it has provoked anger and frustration that they are being falsely portrayed as victims of a 'white genocide', 31 years after their community's own oppressive minority rule ended. In February, Trump signed an executive order claiming Afrikaners, who make up about 4% of South Africa's population, or about 2.5 million people, were victims of 'unjust racial discrimination'. The order cut aid to the country and established a refugee programme for white South Africans. The first group arrived in May. Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch colonisers and French Huguenot refugees who came to South Africa in the late 17th century, implemented apartheid from 1948. The regime violently repressed the black majority, while keeping white people safe and wealthy. South Africa remains deeply unequal. White South Africans typically have 20 times the wealth of Black people, according to an article in the Review of Political Economy. The spectacle of white people being flown to the US while Trump blocked refugees from war zones bemused and angered South Africans of all races. For some liberal Afrikaners, it felt personal. 'In terms of being singled out, for progressives it's extremely painful,' said Lindie Koorts, a history lecturer at the University of Pretoria. Koorts mentioned the phrase 'ons is nie almal so nie' ('we are not all like that'). She said the phrase is used by progressives to reach out across South Africa's divides without disavowing their Afrikaner or South African identities – despite it having become a cliche that conservative Afrikaners use to mock them. The rightwing Solidarity Movement, which includes a trade union and the campaigning group AfriForum, has lobbied Trump since his first presidential term for support in helping Afrikaners stay in South Africa, to preserve what Solidarity Movement says is a culture under threat. The group argues, for instance, that a recently implemented education law will limit Afrikaans schooling, something the ruling African National Congress disputes. There is not comprehensive polling data on Afrikaners' political views. However, the Freedom Front Plus party, which is seen as representing conservative Afrikaners, received about 456,000 votes in the 2024 national elections. Emile Myburgh, a lawyer who grew up during apartheid believing that Afrikaners were God's chosen people, said: 'I remember when I was a child often hearing Afrikaners say that: 'The one who rules the tip of Africa rules the world.' So we'd feel very special.' Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion As an atheist, Myburgh, 52, said he now felt excluded from the deeply religious community he grew up in. However, he disputed the claim that his culture was under threat, noting that he regularly attended Afrikaans book launches. 'In the circles that I move in, we do celebrate Afrikaans culture,' he said. Zahria van Niekerk, a 22-year-old fashion student, who was raised bilingually to help her get into university, disagreed that the Afrikaans language, of whom the majority of speakers are now non-white, was threatened. 'My whole family speaks Afrikaans … As long as I can speak it with my family, I'm not really concerned.' In May, Trump ambushed South Africa's president, Cyril Ramaphosa, in the Oval Office with claims that white farmers were being murdered for their race. However, Emil van Maltitz, an economics graduate and farmer's son, disagreed. The 21-year-old, who speaks Sesotho, Afrikaans and English, said: 'Most farmers are white Afrikaners, so it can easily be interpreted as racial targeting. I just think, personally, people are very vulnerable in those areas and they don't have a lot of help from the police.' In the last quarter of 2024, South African police recorded 12 murders on farms, including Black-owned smallholder plots, out of almost 7,000 murders across the country. Van Maltitz recalled young black farmers coming to his father to seek agricultural advice, saying it showed the value of South Africans working together. 'I love diversity, I love being around different people,' he said. Schalk van Heerden is a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, the largest Afrikaans church. He joked that he was a 'missionary' within the DRC, which supported the apartheid regime. Van Heerden co-founded Betereinders in 2017 to bring about 50 to 100 Afrikaners to monthly brais (barbecues) with up to 200 black people in townships, where most black South Africans still live. Betereinders means 'better-enders' and is a pun on 'bittereinders' ('bitter-enders'), Afrikaners who refused to surrender to the British when their side lost the Boer war. When Trump introduced the refugee scheme for Afrikaners, Beterenders put up 10 billboards around Johannesburg and Pretoria saying, 'Not USA. You, SA.' Van Heerden said: 'We want to be proud about who we are … [But] we are not the big victims in this story. We are privileged, we are very grateful and we are thankful for everything we have.'
The Guardian
10 hours ago
- Politics
- The Guardian
‘We are privileged': liberal Afrikaners reject Trump's ‘white genocide' claims
For some white Afrikaner South Africans, Donald Trump's offer of refugee status in the US has been seen as a godsend. For others, it has provoked anger and frustration that they are being falsely portrayed as victims of a 'white genocide', 31 years after their community's own oppressive minority rule ended. In February, Trump signed an executive order claiming Afrikaners, who make up about 4% of South Africa's population, or about 2.5 million people, were victims of 'unjust racial discrimination'. The order cut aid to the country and established a refugee programme for white South Africans. The first group arrived in May. Afrikaners, descendants of Dutch colonisers and French Huguenot refugees who came to South Africa in the late 17th century, implemented apartheid from 1948. The regime violently repressed the black majority, while keeping white people safe and wealthy. South Africa remains deeply unequal. White South Africans typically have 20 times the wealth of Black people, according to an article in the Review of Political Economy. The spectacle of white people being flown to the US while Trump blocked refugees from war zones bemused and angered South Africans of all races. For some liberal Afrikaners, it felt personal. 'In terms of being singled out, for progressives it's extremely painful,' said Lindie Koorts, a history lecturer at the University of Pretoria. Koorts mentioned the phrase 'ons is nie almal so nie' ('we are not all like that'). She said the phrase is used by progressives to reach out across South Africa's divides without disavowing their Afrikaner or South African identities – despite it having become a cliche that conservative Afrikaners use to mock them. The rightwing Solidarity Movement, which includes a trade union and the campaigning group AfriForum, has lobbied Trump since his first presidential term for support in helping Afrikaners stay in South Africa, to preserve what Solidarity Movement says is a culture under threat. The group argues, for instance, that a recently implemented education law will limit Afrikaans schooling, something the ruling African National Congress disputes. There is not comprehensive polling data on Afrikaners' political views. However, the Freedom Front Plus party, which is seen as representing conservative Afrikaners, received about 456,000 votes in the 2024 national elections. Emile Myburgh, a lawyer who grew up during apartheid believing that Afrikaners were God's chosen people, said: 'I remember when I was a child often hearing Afrikaners say that: 'The one who rules the tip of Africa rules the world.' So we'd feel very special.' Sign up to Headlines US Get the most important US headlines and highlights emailed direct to you every morning after newsletter promotion As an atheist, Myburgh, 52, said he now felt excluded from the deeply religious community he grew up in. However, he disputed the claim that his culture was under threat, noting that he regularly attended Afrikaans book launches. 'In the circles that I move in, we do celebrate Afrikaans culture,' he said. Zahria van Niekerk, a 22-year-old fashion student, who was raised bilingually to help her get into university, disagreed that the Afrikaans language, of whom the majority of speakers are now non-white, was threatened. 'My whole family speaks Afrikaans … As long as I can speak it with my family, I'm not really concerned.' In May, Trump ambushed South Africa's president, Cyril Ramaphosa, in the Oval Office with claims that white farmers were being murdered for their race. However, Emil van Maltitz, an economics graduate and farmer's son, disagreed. The 21-year-old, who speaks Sesotho, Afrikaans and English, said: 'Most farmers are white Afrikaners, so it can easily be interpreted as racial targeting. I just think, personally, people are very vulnerable in those areas and they don't have a lot of help from the police.' In the last quarter of 2024, South African police recorded 12 murders on farms, including Black-owned smallholder plots, out of almost 7,000 murders across the country. Van Maltitz recalled young black farmers coming to his father to seek agricultural advice, saying it showed the value of South Africans working together. 'I love diversity, I love being around different people,' he said. Schalk van Heerden is a minister in the Dutch Reformed Church, the largest Afrikaans church. He joked that he was a 'missionary' within the DRC, which supported the apartheid regime. Van Heerden co-founded Betereinders in 2017 to bring about 50 to 100 Afrikaners to monthly brais (barbecues) with up to 200 black people in townships, where most black South Africans still live. Betereinders means 'better-enders' and is a pun on 'bittereinders' ('bitter-enders'), Afrikaners who refused to surrender to the British when their side lost the Boer war. When Trump introduced the refugee scheme for Afrikaners, Beterenders put up 10 billboards around Johannesburg and Pretoria saying, 'Not USA. You, SA.' Van Heerden said: 'We want to be proud about who we are … [But] we are not the big victims in this story. We are privileged, we are very grateful and we are thankful for everything we have.'
The South African
19 hours ago
- Politics
- The South African
South African 'attacked' in US after being mistaken for 'refugee'
A South African living in the US has recounted how she was almost attacked by Americans after being mistaken for a 'refugee'. This comes after two groups of white South Africans were granted asylum in the US under President Donald Trump's administration. The resettlement programme is open to racial minorities who have voiced their 'fear of persecution' over claims of a 'white genocide' and 'racial discrimination' in the country. On her TikTok account, South African woman Dharma Houston shared her harrowing account of being targeted by Americans over her nationality. She said, 'I just got attacked in a grocery store because someone asked me where I was from. And I said 'South Africa''. She continued: 'One of the workers got up and said, 'You should not be allowed in our country. They should never have let you in. They should never have granted you refugee status.' The woman added, 'I'm not a refugee. This is what it's going to become. Everyone is going to hate South Africans.' @homesickandhot This is coming from genuine confusion not hate ♬ original sound – Dharma Houston Meanwhile, US media are reporting that President Trump is ramping up his plan to grant 1000 white Afrikaners 'refugee status' as part of the resettlement programme. This comes as the Trump administration indefinitely halted the US Refugee Admissions Program (USRAP) to all other countries earlier this year. Around 1000 Afrikaners will be granted 'refugees status' in the US. This comes after President Trump halted resettlement programmes to other countries. Images via X: @usembassysa According to the Washington Post , a state department spokesperson said officials were 'prioritising the US refugee resettlement of Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination'. The administration is also moving to block entry for 160 refugees from other countries that had been scheduled to arrive in the US before Trump halted their admission. Let us know by leaving a comment below, or send a WhatsApp to 060 011 021 1 . Subscribe to The South African website's newsletters and follow us on WhatsApp , Facebook , X, and Bluesky for the latest news.
Roya News
a day ago
- Politics
- Roya News
US considers cutting nearly all international pro-democracy aid programs
Nearly all US-funded pro-democracy programs operating under the State Department's Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor (DRL) are at risk of termination, according to internal briefings on a sweeping foreign assistance review led by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The review, sources say, recommends slashing nearly USD 1.3 billion in grants, leaving just two programs untouched: one in China and one in Yemen, The Guardian reported. 'This would terminate about 80 percent of all US government foreign assistance at the State Department,' said a department official briefed on the matter. The recommendations signal a dramatic shift in US foreign policy priorities under the Trump administration. Critics warn that cutting these programs would leave pro-democracy activists in authoritarian countries vulnerable, with many of these initiatives focused on digital freedom, election support, transnational repression, and emergency protection for at-risk civil society figures. Most DRL-backed programs are kept confidential due to the sensitive nature of their work in hostile regimes like Venezuela, Cuba, and China. However, the sudden recommendation to terminate hundreds of grants stunned many inside the State Department. Officials said leadership in both DRL and the Office of Foreign Assistance were 'in shock.' Adding to the controversy, a newly appointed senior adviser to DRL, Samuel Samson, a recent college graduate and rising conservative figure, has reportedly proposed repurposing Congressionally allocated funds to support administration-linked priorities, including resettling Afrikaners to the US and backing the legal defense of French far-right leader Marine Le Pen. Samson also led a US delegation in May that met with senior officials from Le Pen's National Rally party. Though Le Pen did not meet with him personally, the group rejected a US offer of public support, according to Reuters. Samson's recent writings have drawn criticism as well, particularly a State Department Substack post in which he questioned the designation of Germany's far-right AfD as an extremist party, claiming it undermines democratic elections in Europe. It remains unclear whether his recommendations were included in DRL's official budget planning. The review's release follows OMB Director Russell Vought's Senate testimony, during which he claimed the State Department's foreign assistance programs remained fully operational. Just days later, the results landed at DRL, coinciding with the department's plan to lay off up to 3,400 staff and shutter around 300 offices as part of a massive restructuring championed by Secretary of State Marco Rubio. Under this reorganization, DRL is expected to be gutted, its aid programs stripped, and its staff laid off. Sources noted this would make it nearly impossible to challenge the funding cuts or defend terminated grants, as employees would lose access to the very resources and email systems required to do so. 'If you cut all the programs in DRL, then, why would you need to keep the staff if they're not doing any work,' said one source familiar with the plan. The proposed dismantling of DRL has sparked outrage from Democratic lawmakers. Ten senators recently wrote a letter to Rubio urging him to reconsider. 'The proposed reorganization would result in a structural and substantive demotion of human rights promotion,' they wrote, arguing it runs counter to Rubio's past as a vocal advocate for oppressed peoples. Citing Rubio's own prior testimony, they added, 'Millions of people around the world who live in societies dominated by fear and oppression look to the United States of America to champion their cause… There are no greater champions more capable of advancing this noble cause than the dedicated staff in DRL.' Despite mounting concerns, the State Department's official line remains cautious. When asked for comment, a senior official said, 'The provision of any foreign assistance, including for democracy programming, will be guided by whether it makes America safer, stronger, and more prosperous.' Still, many inside and outside the department worry that once these programs are gone, and the personnel with them, America's global human rights leadership will be diminished for years to come.
