By JAMES MARKIN
In early May, a small number of the white Afrikaans-speaking ethnic minority departed South Africa. According to the South African outlet, News 24, their departure from Oliver Tambo International Airport was silent, “without fanfare.” The departure of this small group has invoked mockery and derision of the “Amerikaners” in their native South Africa and general confusion and anger in the United States.
Trump has kept the issue at the top of the news with his insistence that the Afrikaners are facing genocide in South Africa. On May 21, during a meeting in the White House, he confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with photographs and a video that allegedly proved that genocide was taking place. Ramaphosa rejected the “evidence.”
The Afrikaners and their history
In order to understand the roots of this issue, one must first understand who the Afrikaners are. The Afrikaner ethnic minority includes the descendants of Dutch colonists in South Africa. Although the Dutch were the first to establish a major settler colony in the region, their colonies were then seized by the British. (Britain annexed the Cape Colony in 1806.)
By the 1830s, this led to friction between the slave-owning Dutch colonists and their new colonial overlords, given Britain’s insistence on the abolition of slavery. Ultimately, this conflict led to the “Great Trek” as a large portion of the Dutch colonists moved out of the British-controlled Cape Colony and invaded the South African interior, where they carved out the “Boer Republics.” (Boer means “farmer” in Afrikaans). Eventually, in a series of brutal wars against both the Boers and the various indigenous peoples of the region, the British conquered the entirety of what is now South Africa.
In order to consolidate the white population into one group, and to ease the hard feelings of the conquered Afrikaners, the British steered the colony in an explicitly white supremacist direction. This left the two main white communities—the English-speaking descendants of British colonists and the Afrikaans-speaking descendants of the Dutch colonists—ruling over the vast and diverse territory of what was eventually proclaimed “The Union of South Africa.” The British placated both the representatives of the Boer petit bourgeoisie and workers with various white supremacist policies that ensured that both Afrikaner and British whites would have access to jobs and land while Black South Africans were stripped of their land and forced to work under the worst conditions.
These policies, however, were not enough for the Afrikaner right, and once South Africa became independent from the British Empire and a nominal degree of democratic rights were afforded to white people, they began to push in an even more white supremacist direction. This led directly to the promulgation of the extreme anti-democratic and white supremacist laws that became known as apartheid. Under this scheme, Black South Africans were declared to be foreigners in South Africa, which was proclaimed a white homeland. To attempt to give truth to this idea, the government dreamed up a whole series of supposed “Black homelands” (Bantustans) with the goal of creating a completely subjugated Black labor force that would be treated as a precarious immigrant labor population in South Africa and only enjoy even minimal democratic rights inside the Bantustans.
Apartheid was eventually defeated, but the Afrikaner hard right has not disappeared in South Africa. The holy grail for the post-apartheid Afrikaner “White Right” is some kind of independent Afrikaans homeland. Much like Israeli Zionists, the Afrikaner right has attempted to use the language of self-determination and oppressed nationalities to argue that the rectification of centuries of policies that benefited them at the expense of the Black majority is actually itself oppression.
Enter Solidariteit and Afriforum. Solidariteit is all that remains of the pro-apartheid labor movement in South Africa. The union’s most notorious moment was its role in leading the 1922 miners’ strike, which called for the preservation of white miners’ jobs at the expense of Black mine workers. Today, Solidariteit little resembles the miners’ union that it once was, rather becoming a kind of class-cultural association of the Afrikaaner minority. However, Solidariteit has a particular association with the politics of the “White Right’ and is very closely associated with AfriForum, an organization that pretends to be a “civil rights group” for the “oppressed” Afrikaners. AfriForum makes hay over farm murders (killing of farmers in rural areas) and crime numbers in South Africa to make the argument that there is a new genocide against the Afrikaner minority—a laughable assertion.
In 2024, in the lead-up to the establishment of the second Trump administration, high-level officials from AfriForum went on a major tour of the United States, speaking at the National Conservatism Conference and meeting with Republicans and representatives of the U.S. right. This, combined with the politics of Elon Musk, who was raised in apartheid South Africa, are probably responsible for the rhetoric of the current administration on this issue, although Trump has made similar comments going back to his first term. Nonetheless, many in South Africa were shocked when Trump stated outright on May 12 that Afrikaners were facing a “genocide,” a position that he doubled down on in his May 21 meeting with Ramaphosa.
Are the Afrikaners actually oppressed?
In order to understand some of the rhetoric of Trump and AfriForum, it is important to understand the current political situation in South Africa. In the most recent election, the ruling ANC has fallen to the lowest number of seats in its history, being forced into a coalition government. Its main partner, the Democratic Alliance (DA), represents the white bourgeoisie of the major urban areas, especially Cape Town (although the party of the Afrikaner right, VV+ is also a minor coalition partner).
Due in part to this choice of partners, the ANC has begun to feel a lot of pressure on its left and Black nationalist flanks. The South African Communist Party, an old member of the ANC’s “tripartite alliance,” for example, has promised to break ranks and run its own candidates in the next elections. There is fear in the ANC that two opposition splinter parties, the left-wing Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) and the more ideologically nebulous uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) party, could end up being beneficiaries of this anti-coalition feeling. One way that Ramaphosa’s government has attempted to fend off these rivals is through an attempt to address the signature issue of the EFF and MK—land reform.
In January, Ramaphosa signed a land reform bill into law. However, despite the outcry among much of the country’s right, the new law actually falls far short of the real land reform that is needed and resembles more the very standard “eminent domain” powers of many governments, including the U.S. In continuity with South Africa’s failed previous attempts at land reform, the law requires compensation of the party whose land is being seized. (Exceptions to this come into play if the land is not being used, or if there is no intention to use it for any profitable venture.) It is very unlikely that such a law would be capable of solving South Africa’s major disparities in land ownership: with 73 percent of privately owned land belonging to the country’s 7% white minority. The reality is that this law was only passed so that Ramaphosa could tell voters that he did something about land reform, not to make any significant progress.
Another cause celeb of AfriForum and their ilk is the recently passed Basic Education Laws Amendment (BELA). The law comes out of Ramaphosa’s attempt to reform South Africa’s enormous and unequal public school system, but members of the Afrikaans-speaking Afrikaner and Cape “Coloured” communities are furious that it allows the national government to have final say in the language of instruction in public schools. While minority communities should be able to learn in their mother tongue, there have long been concerns in South Africa that tests of Afrikaans proficiency are still used to exclude Black students from certain public schools. Nonetheless, if the Afrikaner right is really concerned with maintaining mother tongue education, it makes little sense to seek “refuge” in the United States, where their children will almost certainly be educated in English.
The reality behind these laws is not just that Afrikaners are not oppressed, but that they, and white South Africans in general, still enjoy a great degree of privilege in the country. Modern reconciliation and affirmative action programs, such as Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), do not compare in purpose or severity to the centuries of preferential treatment for whites or the explicit land and wealth redistribution programs that benefited white South Africans and impoverished Black South Africans. The reality is that white South Africans account for over 60% of management positions despite being 7% of the country’s population. It is still the case that Black South Africans are much more likely to face poverty and lack of opportunities in the country of their birth. Nor do white South Africans face a higher rate of crime; according to government statistics, out of around 7000 victims of homicide in late 2024, only 12 were victims of farm attacks and only one of those was actually a farmer.
With the reality in focus, AfriForum’s real goal becomes clear. They and their ilk have attempted to use the political situation in South Africa to try to create a false reality that will evoke fear amongst the Afrikaner population and drive them into the arms of the white right. Indeed, actual incidences of anti-Afrikaner violence or policies are basically non-existent and the specter of “Afrikaner genocide” has been conjured entirely out of the fear that privileged minorities often have for the oppressed majority.
The backlash
Despite this context, the idea of fleeing to the U.S. has been met largely with scorn and derision in South Africa, not just by Black South Africans, but by fellow Afrikaners. Indeed, even AfriForum and Solidariteit have released statements calling on Afrikaners to stay in the country. While the idea that Afrikaners are so oppressed in their home country that they must flee to the United States does re-enforce the politics of fear that AfriForum has been using to attempt to push Afrikaners to the right, it actually undermines their broader project. If Afrikaners flee to the U.S., who will be left behind to build the white Afrikaner ethno-state? For more moderate Afrikaners and the general population of the country, leaving for the U.S. is seen as the ultimate betrayal of their people and their country; many such people have accused the “refugees” of merely being opportunists who are seeking out higher pay in the U.S.
In the United States there has also been a backlash, with the Episcopal Church notifying the government of its intention to pull out of the refugee resettlement program rather than help resettle these supposed “refugees.” In a public statement, the Episcopal Bishop Sean Rowe stated: “It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years.”
This sentiment has been echoed by many people in this country as we watch a small group of white people be fast tracked while many more from Asia, Africa, and South America can’t get refugee status despite facing much more dire circumstances. While Trump’s abuse of the refugee program is particularly farcical, the program does have a long history of being used to invite in politically favored groups (Cuban, South Vietnamese elites) while non-favored groups are barred.
What about antisemitism?
While most of the refugees have steered clear of the press and maintained more or less anonymous status, one “refugee” in particular, Charl Kleinhaus, has decided to do interviews with the BBC and The New York Times. Kleinhaus’s comments in the interviews have made the political nature of the “Amerikaner” situation even more absurd.
In his interviews, Kleinhaus insists that he has come to the U.S. only because he lives in fear. In order to back that up, he has told the press that he left a five-bedroom house in the beautiful region of Mpumalanga behind in order to come to the U.S. A quick search of Mr Kleinhaus’s social media has also revealed a whole slew of right-wing and racist posts.
One post that has particularly drawn scrutiny is an antisemitic post he made in 2023, where he tweeted that Jews are “dangerous and untrustworthy.” While he told the BBC that this post was made under the influence of medication, the antisemitic history of Kleinhaus is revealing, given that Trump’s Department of Homeland Security has been making claims about screening for antisemitism in its immigration policy. This, like much of Trump’s policy around antisemitism, has nothing to do with the actual safety of Jews; rather, the DHS has been attempting to use false accusations of antisemitism to clam down on anti-Israel speech. Indeed, Charl Kleinhaus’s posts expose exactly this, showing that the DHS was more than happy to admit a “refugee” with a very public and obvious history of antisemitism if it served the administration’s broader right-wing goals.
“Amerikaners” and the U.S. working class
All in all, the whole “Afrikaner refugee” situation is nothing more than an utter farce. Workers in the U.S. owe no solidarity to racist labor organizations like Solidariteit. While we should defend the right of people to move throughout the world, we must push back against the racist persecution fantasies of the South African white right.
While his behavior might be farcical, Trump’s embrace of this rhetoric should be taken seriously. His policy represents a continuation of Elon Musk’s effort to build international networks and fellowship amongst the global right. Workers in the U.S. should be building even bigger and more substantial networks of international solidarity to fight back.
