White South Africans Reject Donald Trump’s Offer to Emigrate to the United States

The Afrikaners (white South Africans) were quick to reject Donald Trump’s offer to emigrate to the United States under a humanitarian program.
President Donald Trump had recently signed an executive order allowing Afrikaners to settle in the United States as refugees, claiming that they are victims of racial discrimination in South Africa. These allegations have been denied by the Afrikaners themselves, who do not seem impressed by Donald Trump’s selective generosity.
South Africans of European origin say they prefer to stay in their country, where they enjoy the privilege of controlling the majority of the country’s assets, even though they are in the minority.
According to USA Today, Trump has also decided to reduce US aid to South Africa because of a land expropriation law signed by President Cyril Ramaphosa. This reform aims to correct the land inequalities inherited from apartheid, a period when the land mainly belonged to the white minority.
However, despite the concerns raised by certain Afrikaner pressure groups, the majority of white South Africans do not seem ready to leave their country. “There has been no real expropriation, life goes on as normal here,” said Neville van der Merwe, a 78-year-old retiree, quoted by USA Today.
Historically, South Africa’s agricultural land was allocated to European settlers under British rule, and then reinforced by the apartheid policy, which, in 1950, led to the confiscation of 85% of the land by the white minority, forcibly displacing 3.5 million black South Africans.
Today, whites represent 7.2% of the South African population, or about 4.5 million people out of a total population of 63 million. The majority of agricultural land remains in the hands of the descendants of the first Dutch and French settlers, commonly known as Afrikaners, says USA Today.
The African National Congress (ANC), the party of President Ramaphosa, accuses Trump of spreading false information, particularly that propagated by AfriForum, an Afrikaner pressure group that denounces the government’s land policy.
The South African government insists that the expropriation law is aimed solely at unused land or land of public interest, and not at confiscation targeted at white landowners.
While the Trump administration is seeking to attract Afrikaners to the United States, the reality on the ground shows that few of them are ready to leave their country, preferring to adapt to the political and social changes in South Africa, where they have the luxury of controlling the majority of the country’s wealth.
According to critics, Donald Trump’s decree proves that he has no problem with immigrants, as long as they are white – who, however, do not want the American president’s poisoned gift.