A fifth of black South Africans would move to the United States (US) as refugees if that possibility were open to them. However, fewer than one in ten white South Africans would do the same.
This is according to polling conducted by The Common Sense in conjunction with the Social Research Foundation.
Respondents were asked, assuming the American refugee policy was open to South Africans beyond Afrikaners, whether they believed they would qualify on the grounds of having been affected by violent crime and unemployment, and if they did qualify, whether they would take up the offer to move to the US.
The responses are set out in the chart below.
There is a lot going on in that table.
The first thing is that black and white South Africans have fairly similar views on whether they would qualify as refugees. African National Congress (ANC) and Democratic Alliance (DA) supporters share similar views too. Even Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and uMkhonto weSizwe Party supporters have views that don’t fundamentally contradict those of DA and ANC supporters. There is a lot of common ground here across the racial and political divide.
The second thing is that black South Africans are more likely to opt to take refugee status in America than white South Africans are. For black South Africans, 9.0% believed they would qualify and would take up this status, while 11.0% would not qualify but would take up this status if they did. That means that one in five black South Africans would go to America as refugees if they could. For whites, the equivalent figure is just over 7.0%.
Read today’s editorial on these pages for why the data make sense.
