A cohort of 49 South Africans left the country on Saturday for the U.S. on a privately chartered plane after being granted refugee status by the Trump administration as part of an anti-discrimination program announced in February.
The group, which included families and small children, was due to arrive at Dulles International Airport outside Washington D.C. on Monday morning local time, according to Collen Msibi, a spokesperson for South Africa’s transport ministry.
They are the first Afrikaners, an ethnic group of predominantly Dutch and French descent whose ancestors settled in South Africa in the 17th century, to be relocated to the U.S. after President Trump issued an executive order on Feb. 7, accusing South Africa’s Black-led government of racial discrimination against the group and announcing a program to relocate them.
“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,” the Trump administration executive order states.
The South African government vehemently denies that Afrikaners are being discriminated against, and called the Trump administration’s claim “completely false,” adding that it paints an unrepresentative picture of the country.
In a press conference on Monday, when asked about the incoming group of Afrikaners, whom the U.S. has chosen to welcome as refugees at a time when the country is also executing mass deportations of foreign nationals, many of whom hold legal status in the country, Trump said it’s because “they are being killed, and we don’t want to see people be killed.”
Trump added that he will meet with South African leaders next week to discuss the issue further.
“South Africa leadership is coming to see me, I understand sometime next week, and we are supposed to have, I guess, a G20 meeting there or something. But we’re having a G20 meeting, I don’t know how we can go unless that situation is taken care of,” he told reporters, adding that the South African government’s treatment of Afrikaners amounts to genocide.
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“It’s a genocide that’s taking place that you people don’t wanna write about, but it’s a terrible thing that is 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, and the newspapers and the media and television media doesn’t even talk about it. If it were the other way round, they’d talk about it, that would be the only story they’d talk about,” he continued.
The president did not elaborate on this claim, nor did he provide any evidence of a genocide against the group.
“I don’t care who they are, I don’t care about their race, their colour, I don’t care about their height, their weight, I don’t care about anything, I just know that what’s happening is terrible,” he went on.
“I have people that live in South Africa, they say it’s a terrible situation taking place, so we’ve essentially extended citizenship to those people to escape from that violence and come here,” the president concluded.
Newly arrived South Africans wait to hear welcome statements from U.S. government officials in a hangar at Atlantic Aviation Dulles near Washington Dulles International Airport on May 12, 2025, in Dulles, Virginia.
Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images
According to South African authorities, Afrikaners are among “the most economically privileged” people in the nation.
There are around 2.7 million Afrikaners among South Africa’s population of 62 million, which is more than 80 per cent Black. Hence, despite being a minority, many in South Africa, given its fraught racial history, are confused by claims that white Afrikaners are being persecuted and meet the requirements to be refugees.
The first group of Afrikaners from South Africa to arrive for resettlement listens to remarks from US Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and US Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Troy Edgar (both out of frame), after they arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Virginia, on May 12, 2025.
Photo by SAUL LOEB/AFP via Getty Images)
There are many successful Afrikaner business leaders, some hold cabinet minister positions in government, and their language, Afrikaans, is widely spoken — including by non-Afrikaners — and is recognized as an official language.
Nonetheless, Trump and his South African-born colleague, Elon Musk, accused the country’s government in February of implementing racist anti-white laws and economic policies that disproportionately impact rural Afrikaner farmers.
The claims are founded on a relatively small number of violent farm attacks and robberies on white people in rural communities, but the U.S. alleges the attacks are racially motivated, and that the South African government is “fuelling” them by allowing anti-white rhetoric to circulate and not providing sufficient protection to white Afrikaners.
The government says those claims are false, has condemned the farm attacks, and says their cause is being purposefully falsified.
Violent attacks on farm owners in South Africa have been a problem for years, but instances represent a small percentage of the country’s extremely high violent crime rates, which affect all races. The government says there is no targeting of white people in South Africa and no persecution, and farm attacks are part of its struggles with violent crime.
— With files from The Associated Press
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