[Image: PXHere]
Thanks, but no thanks, Oom Donald.
Afrikaner groups in South Africa have declined US President Donald Trump’s offer to grant them refugee status and resettlement in the United States.
The plan was detailed in an executive order Trump signed Friday that stopped all aid and financial assistance to South Africa as punishment for what the Trump administration said were “rights violations” by the government against some of its white citizens.
The Trump administration accused the South African government of allowing violent attacks on white Afrikaner farmers and introducing a land expropriation law that enables it to “seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation.”
The move comes after he signed an executive order to cut US financial assistance to SA, which many believe to be retaliation for SA’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice.
“A campaign of misinformation and propaganda”
On Saturday, both Solidarity and Afriforum said they would not be taking up Trump’s offer of resettlement in the U.S.
“Our members work here and want to stay here, and they are going to stay here,” said Dirk Hermann, chief executive of the Afrikaner trade union Solidarity, which says it represents about 2 million people.
“We are committed to building a future here. We are not going anywhere.”
At the same news conference, Kallie Kriel, the CEO of the Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum, said: “We have to state categorically: We don’t want to move elsewhere.”
Trump’s move to sanction South Africa, a key U.S. trading partner in Africa, came after he and his South African-born adviser Elon Musk accused its leadership of having an anti-white stance.
However the portrayal of Afrikaners as a downtrodden group that needed to be saved would surprise most South Africans.
“It is ironic that the executive order makes provision for refugee status in the U.S. for a group in South Africa that remains amongst the most economically privileged.”
Despite the thought of living under a Trump administration being enough to stop any Afrikaner from moving, most experts agree it would be a tough sell for Afrikaners to prove that they have “a well-founded fear of being persecuted based on the five [protected] grounds in the United States – namely race, religion, nationality, social group and political opinion”.
Nee dankie. Trump’s going to have to make America great again without the boere.
While we’re on the subject of ‘persecuted people’ and erstwhile colonisers, Trump at least ruled out deporting Prince Harry back to sunny England, saying that the prince “Has enough problems with his wife”.
View this post on Instagram
[Source: VoA]
