White South Africans granted the refugee status through Trump leaves for us

A Charter plane funded by the US with dozens of white South Africans who claim to have been the victim of discrimination in their home country left Johannesburg, on their way to the United States, where the Trump government welcomes them as refugees.

The departure of the white South Africans, who say they were denied jobs and have been the target due to violence because of their race, was a remarkable development in the redefinition of US foreign policy by President Trump.

Mr. Trump has stopped almost all admission to refugees for people who are fleeing famine and war from places such as Sudan and the Democratic Republic of Congo. But he has created an accelerated path to the country for Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority that created and led the brutal apartheid regime in South Africa.

The refugee process often takes years. But only three months have passed from the moment that Mr Trump signed an executive order that the refugee status for Afrikaners to the first cohort, who went to America.

Families who stand in line to check in for the flight on Sunday evening or Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg waved questions from reporters and said the American embassy instructed them not to speak with the news media. Parents, with children in tow, pushed trolleys high with luggage and quietly spoke together.

One of the travelers briefly cracked a smile when he was asked if he would miss rugby, a favorite sport from Afrikaners, and Biltong, a popular Jerky-like snack. But the police occasionally reprimanded journalists and said they didn’t want them to oppose the Afrikaners.

A total of 49 Afrikaners were on board the flight, according to a spokesperson for the airport authority of South Africa.

While administrative officials are planning to celebrate the Afrikaners on their planned arrival on Monday morning in Washington, auxiliary groups, immigrant rights activists and the South African government and the public criticized the refugee initiative and say that it makes a ridicule of a system that is conceived to help the most vulnerable.

Even some leading Afrikaner activists in South Africa said they would rather have if Mr Trump would offer support to them to build a better life at home.

The Afrikaner refugee program seems to have deepened the tensions in an already tense relationship between South Africa and the United States.

While Mr Trump has equated the efforts of the South African government to reverse racial inequalities created by apartheid in anti-white discrimination, South African officers have imposed the award of refugee status to Afrikaners as a politically motivated attempt to disrupt the country. The Trump government has criticized the South African government because he has a close relationship with Iran and for its strong attitude against Israel, including bringing A genocide case at the International Court of Justice About the war in Gaza.

But for many Afrikaners, the descendants of European settlers who arrived in the country about four centuries ago, this moment goes beyond politics.

“No white person in his right -wing spirit would stay in this country,” said Jaco van der Merwe, 52, an Afrikaner who lived in Johannesburg, adding that he and his wife had been the victim of violent attacks and transferred for jobs because they are white. “I believe that South Africa is ready.”

Mr Van der Merwe said that he had contacted the embassy of the United States in South Africa to ask about applying for refugee status, but had not yet received a response.

The Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in March that it had received questions from more than 8,000 people. It is unclear when the government will allow more.

Much of the dissatisfaction among Afrikaners concentrates on their experiences in rural communities and tensions about land ownership that have remain unsolved more than 30 years ago since the end of apartheid.

Many Afrikaners farm to earn a living. During apartheid, the Black South Africans government denied the right to possess prime agricultural land. That meant that almost all large -scale commercial farmers in the country were white, and that remains to this day.

Although white South Africans are only 7 percent of the population, they have agricultural land that covers about half of the country. That is an indication of a wider welfare gap, in which white South Africans enjoy much higher employment rates, lower poverty figures and more lucrative wages than their black counterparts.

The government’s efforts to redistribute land after apartheid have largely fallen due to a variety of factors, including corruption, a lack of financial support for black farmers and the inability to get enough white South Africans to voluntarily sell their country.

This year, the President of South Africa, Cyril Ramaphosa, signed a measure that gives the government the opportunity to take private ownership without paying compensation. Although legal experts say that non -compensated attacks are subject to strict judicial assessment and are probably rare, Afrikaner community leaders have expressed the fear that white farmers will have their country decrease from them.

Although there have been no attacks, Mr Trump said, inaccurately, on social media In February the South African government seized the country.

Zimasa Matiwane has contributed to reporting from Johannesburg, and Zolan Kanno-Youngs And Hamed Aleziz from Washington.