‘No thanks’: White South Africans turn down Trump’s US immigration offer

White South African refugees fleeing persecution may not be in the same mood as Donald Trump’s offer to rehouse them because right-wing white lobby groups want to “tackle the injustices” of Black majority rule on their own soil.

According to an expropriation act signed last month by President Cyril Ramaphosa and aimed at redressing land inequalities brought on by South Africa’s history of white supremacy, Trump on Friday signed an executive order to reduce US aid to the country.

Trump’s order provided for resettlement in the US of “Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination” as refugees.

Afrikaners are mostly white descendants of early Dutch and French settlers, who own the majority of the country’s farmland.

“If you haven’t got any problems here, why would you want to go”? asked Neville van der Merwe, a 78-year-old pensioner in Bothasig near Cape Town.

“There hasn’t been any really bad]people] taking over our land, the people are carrying on like normal and you know, what are you going to do over there”?

By facilitating the state’s expropriation of land in the public interest, the act signed by Ramaphosa aims to address racial land ownership disparities, which have resulted in the white minority owning three-quarters of privately held land in South Africa.

Ramaphosa has defended the policy.

White people represent 7.2 percent of South Africa’s population of 63 million, statistics agency data shows. The data does not break down how many are Afrikaners.

Before South Africa’s independence, its British colonial rulers handed most farmland to whites. In 1950, the apartheid-era National Party seized 85 percent of the land, forcing 3.5 million Black people from their homes.

Ramaphosa’s African National Congress (ANC), the biggest party in the ruling coalition, says Trump is amplifying misinformation propagated by AfriForum, an Afrikaner-led group.

The group, which lobbied Trump’s previous administration regarding its cause, said it was not taking up the offer.

“Emigration only provides an opportunity for Afrikaners who are willing to risk risking losing their African heritage to their ancestors.” Kallie Kriel, CEO of AfriForum, stated on Saturday that the cost is “too high.”

Homeland

Separately, the Solidarity Movement, which includes AfriForum and the Solidarity trade union and represents roughly 600,000 Afrikaner families and two million people, expressed its commitment to South Africa.

“We may disagree with the ANC, but we love our country. There are people who want to immigrate, just like there are in any community, but the Solidarity Movement argued that the return of Afrikaners as refugees is not a viable option.

Representatives of Orania, an Afrikaner-only enclave in the heart of the country, also rejected Trump’s offer.

“Afrikaners do not want to be refugees. We love and are committed to our homeland”, Orania said.

Since the end of apartheid, South Africa’s land policies have never involved the forced sequestration of white-owned land.

Still, some said they appreciated Trump’s offer.

“I think it’s a very nice gesture from Donald Trump to offer us asylum over there”, said Werner van Niekerk, 57, a carpenter in Bothasig, without saying whether he would be migrating to the US.

Others saw the funny side.