South Africa’s President has branded a group of 59 white Afrikaners granted refugee status in the US as ‘cowards’.
The White House expedited the group’s applications after saying they were victims of ‘racial discrimination’ under Cyril Ramaphosa’s African National Congress (ANC) government.
US President Donald Trump was instrumental in their arrival in Washington DC on Monday, accusing South Africa of allowing a ‘genocide’ to take place and for ‘white farmers’ to specifically be targeted.
But Ramaphosa said those who wanted to leave the country were simply not happy with his efforts to fix the inequalities caused by South Africa’s apartheid past.
He said: ‘As South Africans, we are resilient. We don’t run away from our problems. We must stay here and solve our problems.
‘When you run away you are a coward, and that’s a real cowardly act.
‘I can bet you that they will be back soon because there is no country like South Africa.’
Black farmers still own a small fraction of the nation’s prime farmland more than 30 years after the end of apartheid in 1994 – the same year the ANC was elected.
Ramaphosa has recently stepped up efforts to address the land-based inequities, signing in a law in January to seize privately owned land without compensation.
In response, the Trump administration, including South Africa-born Elon Musk, accused the ANC of ‘hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.’
But no land has yet been expropriated by the South African government.
Trump’s openness to accepting Afrikaner refugees is in stark contrast to a wider crackdown on migrants and asylum seekers from other countries.
On Monday top US officials welcomed the group into the country, with Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau telling them: ‘Welcome to the land of the free.’
The arrival of the first Afrikaners to the US follows an executive order in February.
The White House said: ‘It is the policy of the United States that, as long as South Africa continues these unjust and immoral practices that harm our Nation, the United States shall not provide aid or assistance to South Africa.
‘The United States shall promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.’
Ramaphosa has firmly rejected Trump’s assessment of the situation in South Africa, saying: ‘We’re the only country on the continent where the colonisers came to stay and we have never driven them out of our country.’
He said dozens of white South Africans who arrived in the US ‘don’t fit the bill’ for refugee status.
On Monday, Ramaphosa said those moving to the US were not ‘favourably disposed’ to efforts aimed at addressing the country’s challenges.
‘If you look at all national groups in our country, black and white, they’ve stayed in this country because it’s our country and we must not run away from our problems,’ he added.
‘We must stay here and solve our problems.’
According to the US Embassy in South Africa, an individual must be an Afrikaner – or another racial minority, of South African nationality and able to cite an incident of past persecution or fear of persecution in the future in order to qualify for the refugee scheme.
Close to 70,000 South Africans have expressed interest in moving to the US, according to the South African Chamber of Commerce in the USA.
Tensions between South Africa and the Trump administration have been growing in recent months.
In March, South Africa’s ambassador to the US, Ebrahim Rasool, was expelled after accusing President Trump of using ‘white victimhood as a dog whistle’, leading to the US accusing Mr Rasool of ‘race-baiting’.
Since his return to the White House in January, Trump has cut all U.S. financial assistance to South Africa, citing disapproval of its land policy and of its genocide case at the International Court of Justice against Washington’s ally, Israel.