A group of 59 White South Africans arrived in the United States last week after being granted refugee status by the White House, which has fast-tracked the processing of Afrikaner refugees but paused refugee applications for other nationalities.
On Wednesday, South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa is set to meet his US counterpart Donald Trump in Washington, seeking a reset in relations with the United States. Ties between both nations have been fraught since Trump froze aid to South Africa in February over claims it was mistreating its minority White population.
The South African government said “reframing bilateral, economic and commercial relations” was the specific focus of Ramaphosa’s US visit. Ramaphosa said that the White South Africans arriving in the US “do not fit the bill” for having refugee status as someone who is leaving their country out of fear of persecution.
But as thousands more Afrikaners hope for admission to the US, others insist they have no need of refugee status but want America’s help instead to tackle a wave of violent crime in South Africa, or even to establish an autonomous state within a state.
Joost Strydom leads the group of White South Africans who have dismissed the US’ offer of asylum, and heads Orania, a separatist “Afrikaner-only” settlement in the country’s Northern Cape.
“Help us here,” he said his message was to Trump, whom he hopes will recognize Orania’s quest for self-determination.
“We don’t want to leave here,” he told CNN. “We don’t want to be refugees in the US.”
Home to some 3,000 Afrikaners, the 8,000-hectare (19,800-acre) Orania town is partially self-governing. The exclusively White enclave produces half of its own electricity needs, takes local taxes, and prints its own currency that’s pegged to the South African rand. But the settlement’s residents want more: its recognition as an independent state.
Strydom was part of Orania’s delegation to the US in late March to push for this goal.
“We met with government officials,” he said. “The conversation is ongoing, and it is something that we’ve decided to keep a low profile on.”
Orania is backed by a 1994 post-apartheid accord that allowed for Afrikaner self-determination, including the concept of an Afrikaner state, referred to as Volkstaat.
Strydom anticipates that the settlement could develop into a “national home for the Afrikaner people.”
Why are some Afrikaners fleeing to the US?
Afrikaners are the descendants of predominantly Dutch settlers in South Africa, with White South Africans making up roughly 7% of the country’s population as of 2022 – a share that had declined from 11% in 1996, census data shows.
A discriminatory apartheid government led by Afrikaners lost power in the mid-1990s, replaced by a multi-party democracy dominated by the African National Congress.
At least 67,000 South Africans have shown interest in seeking refugee status in the US, according to the South African Chamber of Commerce in the USA (SACCUSA).
In comments justifying his decision to resettle Afrikaners in the US, Trump cited claims that “a genocide is taking place” in South Africa, adding that “White farmers are being brutally killed and their land confiscated.”
South African authorities have strongly denied such claims. In a statement in February, the South African Police Service said “only one farmer, who happens to be white,” had been killed between October 1 and December 31, and urged the public “to desist from assumptions that belong to the past, where farm murders are the same as murders of white farmers.”
Police minister Senzo Mchunu stressed in a recent statement that there was no evidence of a “White genocide” in the country.
The police crime figure for the last quarter of 2024 had been disputed by an Afrikaner advocacy group, AfriForum, which argued that five farm owners were murdered during those months and that police had underreported the actual figures.
AfriForum has been documenting farm murders in South Africa for years. In its report for 2023, it said there were at least 77 farm attacks and nine murders in the first quarter of that year, almost equaling the 80 attacks and 11 murders it recorded within the same period in 2022. CNN could not independently verify those figures – the government says around 20,000 people are murdered each year.
Most of the attacks happened in Gauteng province, the group stated. Gauteng is home to the largest concentration of South Africa’s White population, according to the country’s last census in 2022, with about 1.5 million Whites living there.
Afrikaner farmer Adriaan Vos is a recent victim of Gauteng’s farm attacks. The 55-year-old said he was left fighting for his life just two months ago after being shot on his farm in Glenharvie, a township in Westonaria, West of Gauteng.
“I was shot twice in the knee and once at my back,” Vos said about the attack on his farm in the early hours of March 16.
“Luckily, that bullet stuck next to my lung,” he said, adding that his farmhouse was pillaged and set on fire the same night.
Vos could not identify his attackers and is unsure whether the attack was racially motivated. But the raid appears to be part of a pattern of farm attacks that has persisted for years in South Africa, a country grappling with one of the world’s highest murder rates.
South African authorities rarely publish crime figures by race but local media report that most murder victims are Black.
Westonaria police told CNN there are “no known suspects” in the attack on Vos’ farm and “no clues of who the attackers were.”
South African leader Ramaphosa does not believe that Afrikaners are being persecuted – as claimed by Trump and his ally Elon Musk, who was born and raised in the country – and has described those fleeing to the US as “cowards” who are opposed to his government’s efforts to undo the legacy of apartheid, especially inequality.
One of those efforts was the controversial enactment in January of an Expropriation Act, which empowers South Africa’s government to take land and redistribute it – with no obligation to pay compensation in some instances – if the seizure is found to be “just and equitable and in the public interest.”
Under apartheid, Black South Africans were forcibly dispossessed of their lands for the benefit of Whites.
Today, some three decades after racial segregation officially ended in the country, Blacks, who comprise over 80% of the country’s population of 63 million, own around 4% of private land while 72% is held by Whites.
Who are the Afrikaners staying back, and what do they want?
For some Afrikaners in Orania, there is more to lose than gain if they choose to be refugees in the US.
Built from scratch on arid land described by Strydom as “an abandoned ghost town” with extreme weather, Orania has witnessed infrastructural growth and is the most realistic place to preserve Afrikaner culture and heritage, according to Cara Tomlinson who coordinates an Afrikaner cultural association.
“If I were to go to America, I would have to give up my language and culture for the American language and culture. I would be abandoning my God-given identity as an Afrikaner for something foreign,” Tomlinson, 24, told CNN.
Leaving Orania for the US is not on the cards either for 70-year-old retired church minister Sarel Roets, who moved to the town in 2019. Orania provides him “a quiet, solitary life,” he told CNN.
“When we travel outside Orania in South Africa, it is very common to be looked at with hate,” he added.
Both Roets and Tomlinson desire Trump’s recognition for Orania, but the legitimacy of the separatist town has been questioned by other South Africans, including members of the radical left-wing party, the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) who say that its “Afrikaner-only” policy “institutionalizes exclusion.”
South Africa’s foreign ministry said Orania had no status as a nation within a nation and remained bound by South African laws.
Beyond Orania, other Afrikaners, such as Vos, who’s still nursing his injuries, do not plan to leave despite the pressures felt by farmers.
“I’m lucky to be alive,” he said, adding: “I must look after this place (his farmland), whatever is left. We were born and bred here. South Africa is all we know.”
But help must come fast, Vos warned, as he outlined what he hoped Ramaphosa will tell his US opposite number during his visit to the White House.
“We need help in South Africa because you don’t know if you’re going to wake up tomorrow. It’s a mess here,” he said.
“Hopefully, he (Ramaphosa) can be open about everything (with Trump) … and say, ‘I’m going to fix it, and I’m going to look after the farmers and the people that are putting food in my mouth.’ He must come and do it, implement it, and let’s start over again.”
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