The South African government has sharply criticised the United States for prioritising refugee applications from white Afrikaners, calling the policy “misguided” and rooted in debunked claims of a “white genocide.”
In a statement, Pretoria said there is no credible evidence that white South Africans face targeted or systematic persecution. It also pointed to an open letter released earlier this week by prominent Afrikaners rejecting the narrative outright, with some labelling the US relocation programme “racist” and politically driven.
“The small number of white Afrikaners applying to move to the US clearly shows they are not being persecuted,” the government noted.
The backlash follows the Trump administration’s decision to set the lowest annual refugee ceiling in US history — just 7,500 people — while creating a special category specifically for white Afrikaner applicants.
Officials in Pretoria accuse Washington of exploiting misinformation for political gain.
Recent South African crime statistics show no evidence that white citizens are disproportionately targeted in violent crimes compared with other racial groups. Violent crime affects all communities, the government stressed, and using it to justify racially selective asylum policies is “deeply irresponsible.”
The controversy is the latest flashpoint in long-running tensions over South Africa’s land reform policy, which permits land seizures without compensation under limited circumstances. Trump has repeatedly criticised the policy, and earlier this year he offered refugee status to Afrikaners — descendants primarily of Dutch and French settlers — after the law was signed.
Relations between Washington and Pretoria have deteriorated further, especially after Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool was expelled for accusing Trump of “mobilising supremacism” and promoting “white victimhood as a dog whistle.”
During a May 2025 Oval Office meeting, Trump reportedly confronted President Cyril Ramaphosa with claims that white farmers were being “killed and persecuted.” He even displayed a photograph he claimed showed body bags of murdered white South Africans — an image Reuters later confirmed was taken years earlier in the Democratic Republic of Congo and had no connection to South Africa.
The White House declined to address the mistake, though it later emerged that misleading footage was also included in an official video presentation. A clip described as depicting burial sites of murdered farmers was later identified as footage from a 2020 protest featuring symbolic crosses representing multiple years of farm attack victims.
South Africa says these distortions only reinforce that the narrative of white persecution is an “invented myth” aimed at stoking racial tension. The government reiterated its commitment to safeguarding all citizens equally, regardless of race, and urged the US to “stop allowing falsehoods to shape its foreign policy decisions.”
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