News Reports on Arrivals of White South African ‘Refugees’ Read Like Onion Headlines

AP Photo/Alex Brandon, File

President Donald Trump’s administration has stopped letting refugees fleeing conflict zones or political persecution from entering the U.S. – but has made an exception for some 60 white South Africans.

The Trump administration will spend U.S. tax dollars to fly them to Dulles International Airport on a State Department-chartered plane on Monday, reported various news outlets that obtained the plans. The headlines on the upcoming flight read like something more likely to be found in satirical websites like The Onion or the Babylon Bee than in actual newspapers.

“About 60 White South Africans expected to arrive in U.S. soon as refugees under Trump order,” read the Washington Post headline.

CBS News’s headline read, “U.S. plans to receive and aid White South Africans granted refugee status as soon as next week, document shows.” “Trump Officials Seek to Bring First White Afrikaners to U.S. as Refugees Next Week,” blared the New York Times. “First white South Africans classified by Trump as refugees due to arrive in U.S.,” added USA Today.

In February, the Trump administration accused South Africa of trying to take white farmers’ land and issued an executive order cutting off all aid to the country and offering refugee status to white South Africans. “In shocking disregard of its citizens’ rights, the Republic of South Africa (South Africa) recently enacted Expropriation Act 13 of 2024 (Act), to enable the government of South Africa to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation,” read the order, which later added:

It is the policy of the United States that, as long as South Africa continues these unjust and immoral practices that harm our Nation:
(a) the United States shall not provide aid or assistance to South Africa; and
(b) the United States shall promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.

Amid ongoing attacks from Trump and his close ally Elon Musk, who is from South Africa, the country’s president, Cyril Ramaphosa, hit back.

“The South African government has not confiscated any land. The recently adopted Expropriation Act is not a confiscation instrument, but a constitutionally mandated legal process that ensures public access to land in an equitable and just manner as guided by the constitution,” Ramaphosa wrote on X.

NBC News fact-checked some of Trump and Musk’s claims on the issue and noted that three-quarters of South Africa’s land is owned by white farmers, and that white workers make nearly three times as much as Black workers in the country – a “hangover” from apartheid. The white population of South Africa is now about 8% of the population, while 80% of the population is Black and owns only 4% of the country’s privately-held land, according to Reuters.

Trump and Musk also have claimed that the white population is facing violence in the country, with Musk going so far in 2023 as to accuse Ramaphosa of remaining silent against those “openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa.”

NBC spoke to Gareth Newham, head of the justice and violence prevention program at the Institute of Security Studies in South Africa, about the accusation, who explained that South Africa remains a country with an unfortunately very high murder rate, but the white population has a far lower homicide rate than the rest of the country.

“Far-right-wing groups in South Africa actively go to America and promulgate this idea of a white genocide because, of course, when you have a high murder rate, white people do get murdered,” Newham concluded.

While Trump and his political allies certainly have every right to draw attention to and publicly oppose South Africa’s Expropriation Act, shutting America’s doors to people whose families have been murdered in war zones or imprisoned by despots, while allowing in Afrikaners for allegedly losing their land is a wild inversion of America’s historic approach to helping the world’s most at need.

Furthermore, it’s a fix to an issue that, at least as of right now, doesn’t appear to be a real problem. If you ask Elon Musk’s own AI-bot Grok, “Is South Africa taking land from white citizens?” The answer is an explanation of South Africa’s Expropriation Act, which concludes by noting, “In practice, no widespread or arbitrary land seizures have occurred under the Act, and the government maintains it’s a tool to redress past injustices, not to target any racial group. But skepticism persists among some White farmers, driven by historical fears and Zimbabwe’s precedent. Always dig into primary sources like the Act itself or court rulings to cut through the noise.”

This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.