Organisations representing Afrikaners in South Africa have said that they will not accept US President Donald Trump’s offer of resettlement in the United States.
These Afrikaner organisations, including Solidarity and AfriForum, held a media briefing on Saturday in Pretoria to respond to Trump’s executive order issued on Friday, which accused South Africa of “seizing ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property,” and offered Afrikaners the opportunity to seek refugee status in America.
In a telephone interview on Sunday, Kallie Kriel, chief executive officer of the Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum, told Xinhua that representatives of Afrikaners would be traveling to the US to meet with Trump’s administration later this month.
When asked about the alleged “land confiscation,” Kriel said the situation had occurred but was not done by the government.
“Land grabs are carried out by politically motivated people. The reason the government should be blamed is that they don’t take this seriously or stop it,” Kriel said.
On Saturday, South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) expressed concern over the Trump executive order to cut financial assistance to the country.
The United States allocated nearly $440 million in assistance to South Africa in 2023, according to US media reports.
The row between the two countries began earlier this week when Trump threatened to withdraw funding for South Africa due to the recently signed Expropriation Act, which allows public institutions to expropriate land in the public interest, Xinhua news agency reported.
“It is of great concern that the foundational premise of this order lacks factual accuracy and fails to recognize South Africa’s profound and painful history of colonialism and apartheid,” the DIRCO said in a statement.
“We are concerned by what seems to be a campaign of misinformation and propaganda aimed at misrepresenting our great nation. It is disappointing to observe that such narratives seem to have found favour among decision-makers in the United States of America,” the statement added.
The statement also described as “ironic” that the US government is offering the “most economically privileged” Afrikaners refuge in their country while simultaneously deporting people from other nations and asylum-seekers.
In the executive order, the US administration said that it cannot support the South African government’s alleged human rights violations and directed its agencies to halt aid to South Africa while offering refugee status to Afrikaner farmers.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Monday dismissed claims that the Expropriation Act was aimed at seizing land and expressed willingness to engage with the Trump administration on land reform policies and other bilateral issues. IANS
