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NERMEEN SHAIKH: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa says he will meet with President Trump at the White House next week, after a group of some 59 Afrikaners arrived in the United States Monday after being granted refugee status. Afrikaners are the white South Africans who ruled the country during apartheid. This comes as the Trump administration has suspended refugee resettlement for almost everyone else in the world.
Speaking Monday, Trump claimed White South Africans face racial discrimination, even though the country’s white minority still owns the vast majority of farmland decades after the end of apartheid rule. Trump said he’s allowing them to come to the United States to escape, quote, “genocide.”
PRESIDENT DONALD TRUMP: It’s a genocide that’s taking place that you people don’t want to write about, but it’s a terrible thing that’s taking place. And farmers are being killed. They happen to be white, but whether they’re white or Black makes no difference to me, but white farmers are being brutally killed, and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: On Monday, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa refuted Trump’s claims that white people are being persecuted in his country, calling it, quote, “a completely false narrative.” On Tuesday, Ramaphosa recounted a conversation he had had with Trump about the situation in his country.
PRESIDENT CYRIL RAMAPHOSA: I had a conversation with President Trump on the phone. And I — he asked, he said, “What’s happening down there? And I said, “President, what you’ve been told by those people who are opposed to transformation back home in South Africa is not true.” And I added to him, I said, “We were well taught by Nelson Mandela and other iconic leaders, like Oliver Tambo, on how to continue to build a united nation out of the diverse groupings that we have in South Africa. We’re the only country on the continent where the colonizers came to stay, and we have never driven them out of our country. So, they are staying, and they’re making great progress. It’s a fringe grouping, that does not have a lot of support, that is anti-transformation and anti-change, that would actually prefer to see South Africa going back to apartheid type of policies.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: This comes as South African-born Trump adviser and multibillionaire Elon Musk has also accused South Africa’s government of promoting what he calls “white genocide.” Musk’s grandfather moved his family to South Africa after embracing the country’s apartheid system.
AMY GOODMAN: On Wednesday, Musk’s artificial intelligence chatbot Grok became a trending topic on X when people tried to use it to answer questions and check facts, and the chatbot added the topic of white genocide in South Africa to its responses, telling users it was, quote, “instructed by my creators” to accept the genocide, quote, “as real and racially motivated,” no matter what the question was.
For more, we’re joined in Cape Town, South Africa, by two guests.
Herman Wasserman is with us, professor of journalism, director of the Centre for Information Integrity in Africa at Stellenbosch University. His new piece for the website Africa Is a Country is headlined “Trump’s fake refugees.” Wasserman himself is a white South African, an Afrikaner.
And Andile Zulu is a political analyst with the Alternative Information and Development Centre. His new piece for the website Africa Is a Country is titled “Race, power, and the politics of distraction.”
We welcome you both to Democracy Now! Herman Wasserman, let’s begin with you. You are a white South African, and you are an Afrikaner. If you can explain, first of all, to the world what exactly that means, and what you thought when you heard President Trump charge white genocide in South Africa?
HERMAN WASSERMAN: Well, I would say that my first response was one of incredulity, and later met with — you know, I think, with disgust even and just a rejection of this notion of a white genocide or whites being persecuted. And I think that view is shared by many others, white South Africans and certainly the majority of South Africans in the country.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: Well, Andile Zulu, if you could also respond to this, these claims of a white genocide in South Africa and Trump bringing over these 59 Afrikaners to the U.S.? And talk about this in the context of this new law that replaces the 1975 Expropriation Act in South Africa, and explain why that’s been so controversial and what it entails.
ANDILE ZULU: Well, this accusation of white genocide emanating from the White House is a conspiracy theory and a myth that has been floating around echo chambers of right-wing populists and white nationalists for many decades now, particularly within the online space. And it essentially calls the accusation that white South Africans — in particular, Afrikaan South Africans — are victims of deliberate, direct, state-sanctioned violence. And anyone who lives in this country who’s awake to the reality of this country — the inequality, the poverty, the unemployment that most Black South Africans have to endure, and including Indian and colored South Africans, as well — knows that it’s patently untrue.
And the truth, however, is irrelevant to those who are perpetuating this myth. What matters is that it’s a means through which you can mobilize anxiety, mobilize fear and mobilize frustration from a segment — I think a relatively small segment — of the population that is dissatisfied with the post-apartheid democracy and the loss of their political elevated status. It’s a way in which you can mobilize fears here in South Africa and then appeal to a base within the MAGA movement in the U.S., as well, to portray the Donald Trump presidency as essentially being a crusader to defend white civilization, both in the U.S.A. and here.
And this all began, initially, with the signing by the president, Ramaphosa, of the Expropriation Act, which in itself is not that much of a radical or progressive policy. It’s a very procedural piece of legislation, which essentially changes the criteria through which government can expropriate private property for the public good and for the public use on the basis of finding just and equitable compensation. And, in fact, most legal experts have said that the instances in which you’ll arrive at nil compensation, at no compensation, would be quite rare, actually.
So, this legislation isn’t an assault on white livelihoods. It isn’t even an attack on the dominance of private property relations in post-apartheid. But for Elon Musk and for Donald Trump, it’s doing what right-wing populism, what racial ideologies always function to do, which is to stoke fear, conflict and division in order to be able to protect the exploitative and unequal relations under South Africa’s neoliberal capitalism, and, I think, under the neoliberal order that we have more broadly.
NERMEEN SHAIKH: And, Andile, I mean, I just want to add these — a couple of things that I wanted to say earlier, which is to clarify for audiences who aren’t as aware of South Africa’s history. It was in a 1913 law that gave over 90% of South Africa’s land to whites. Today, they are some 7% of the population, white South Africans, but they still own about half, 50%, of the country’s land. Afrikaners, who constitute the majority of the white population, are among, of course, the most successful and richest in South Africa. So, if you could explain, Andile, how has this news, Trump’s statement, the fact that these 59 people have now arrived in the U.S. — how has that been received in South Africa, this news?
ANDILE ZULU: I think it’s been a mixture of frustration and bewilderment and just real confusion as to what is the basis of the idea that white South Africans, in particular, Afrikaners, are being persecuted. And as you said, South Africa in the post-apartheid, the past 30 years of democracy that we have, comes out of a history of a white supremacist regime, which not only dispossessed people of color of their land, but also then set up a rigorous economic system of exploitation to ensure the underdevelopment of Black people, Indians and coloreds included, to be able to amass economic and political power.
Now, if you just look, for example, at the statistics that we have on the racial manifestations of inequality in this country, it’s quite clear that this myth of white genocide and of white persecution has no basis in reality. For example, the unemployment rate amongst white South Africans sits at 7.9% as compared to 36.9% for Black South Africans. The poverty rate for white South Africans sits at 1% as compared to 64% for South Africans. And, in fact, the people who are the victims of violence, by and large, due to organized crime and due to the symptoms of societal dysfunction are largely young Black men and young Black women. If you are a young Black person in the place where I live, in Cape Town, and you live in a township in a rural area, you are 16 times more likely to be a victim of homicide as compared to a white South African.
But, however, it’s just important to clarify that white South Africans, of course, because we are all living in a country that has many issues and many crises, are still, of course, victims of violent crime, of state dysfunction, of economic anxiety and of financial precarity, but they are not victims of those things because they are white. Those issues are a symptom of a larger dysfunction due to an incapacitated state, run by kleptocrats, trying to enforce neoliberalism on an increasingly dysfunctional economy.
So, it’s quite important to say that the myth of white genocide has no basis in reality. However, South Africa is facing crises, the three crises of mass unemployment, of inequality and of poverty. And those result from the choices, the bad policy choices, that the ANC has made since 1996, which is essentially an abiding commitment to neoliberal policy, the kinds of policies which are causing the crises that we see in the United States and in many parts of the world, as well.
AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to go back to professor Herman Wasserman. Here in the United States, powerful group of men around Trump, known often as the PayPal Mafia, co-founders and members of PayPal, extend to apartheid South Africa — its members, Elon Musk, co-founder of PayPal with Peter Thiel, along with David Sacks and Roelof Botha. So, you have this situation where most refugees in the world are not allowed into the United States right now, where refugees are being thrown out of the United States, but you have this group on Monday of 59 white South African Afrikaners arriving in the United States after being granted refugee status. Can you talk about this small group around Trump and what they mean for Trump’s worldview right now, and what it means that these refugees are brought here? Did it get much attention in South Africa?
HERMAN WASSERMAN: Well, I’ll —
AMY GOODMAN: I shouldn’t say “refugees,” but these white South African — white South African Afrikaners.
HERMAN WASSERMAN: Yes, I think many South African media outlets refer to these “refugees” in inverted commas, because I think that is the general understanding, that they are not really refugees, as you have pointed out. It flies in the face of the really dire and tragic circumstances that many people around the world live under and that would be much more illegible for refugee status. In fact, as Andile has pointed out, this whole refugee status is based on disinformation. It’s based on a disinformation campaign.
And so, some of it — it’s hard, of course, to pinpoint exactly what happened first, and one would argue that some of these white former South Africans around Donald Trump would have had his ear and would have maybe helped him — tapped into this sort of narrative of white persecution. They also represent to him maybe these white South Africans who have left the country and have sought their fortunes elsewhere and, you know.
But I think what is also important to recognize is that this has also been the result of a concerted effort by some Afrikaner lobby groups over many years to fan that idea that South African — white South Africans, especially Afrikaners, are being persecuted. There have been a consistent campaign by the Afrikaner rights group AfriForum, who have been pushing that narrative for many years. They have lobbied Washington. They have met Republican officials. They’ve appeared on conservative media outlets like The Tucker Carlson Show. They’ve extended their road shows to conservative think tanks and conferences in Europe, like CPAC in Hungary. And in all these places, they’ve painted a dire picture of South Africa, where white farmers are supposedly under constant attack, where they’re singled out for violence, they are on the verge of losing their land, that they are unfairly being targeted by a corrupt and totalitarian government which discriminates against them in what they would call a type of reverse apartheid.
And all of this was very deftly wrapped up in a communication strategy that then eventually found sympathetic ears among U.S. conservatives. And I think with these men around — white former South Africans around Trump, which would have amplified that to him. And now with this so-called refugee campaign, their communication campaign over these many years, their lobbying, has finally paid off.
I think in terms of the South African media, there have been a range of responses. But I think, by and large, people recognize that this has no basis in reality. As Andile said, this is based on a disinformation campaign. You know, some of the conservative elements in the society might find that now somebody has listened to their complaints and taken that seriously. But, you know, anybody who really has their basis in factual reality would know that this is a ruse, that this is a disinformation campaign, and that, actually, this little group of so-called refugees are pawns in a much larger political campaign, a campaign both domestically in the U.S., where Trump is using them as — you know, really, as pawns, as props in a campaign that purports to promote whiteness and whiteness under threat, and also geopolitically.
In his executive order, which granted this refugee status to Afrikaners, it was juxtaposed very closely with criticism of South Africa for taking Israel to the ICJ. So this can clearly also be seen as a message to South Africa to punish them for their stance on Israel and Israel’s war on Gaza and the U.S.’s involvement in support of that war.
So, I think one has to understand that this is — although this group of Afrikaners might be the tokens, might be the people propped up in front of the cameras in this media event, that they are actually pawns and props in a much larger domestic and geopolitical political campaign for Trump, and also domestically in South Africa for a group of Afrikaners who actually do not have any intention to leave. AfriForum and these groups said that they do not want to leave. In other words, this is really a power play for them domestically, as well, to force the South African government to take them, their complaints more seriously, to take their claims to privilege more seriously. So, it is not really about that group of 49 or however many refugees.
AMY GOODMAN: And, of course, the U.S. threw out the South African ambassador to the United States, as well, as President Trump goes after universities that talk about structural and historical racism in the United States. Herman Wasserman, I want to thank you for being with us, professor of journalism, director of the Centre for Information Integrity in Africa at Stellenbosch University. His new piece, we’ll link to, in Africa Is a Country is headlined “Trump’s fake refugees.” Professor Wasserman himself an Afrikaner, a white South African. And Andile Zulu, political analyst with the Alternative Information and Development Centre. His new piece for the website is “Race, power, and the politics of distraction.” We’ll link to that, as well. Both of them joining us from Cape Town, South Africa.
Next up, as Palestinians mark the 77th anniversary of the Nakba — the Arabic word for “catastrophe” — Israel’s brutal assault continues. We’ll speak with a Cornell University professor, lead author of a report released by U.S. academics concluding Israel’s treatment of Palestinians meets the legal threshold of apartheid. Back in 30 seconds.
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AMY GOODMAN: “Fatima” by K’naan, the Canadian Somali musician, in our Democracy Now! studio years ago.
