Written by Kelly Were
The first group of white south africans to be granted refugee status by trump are on their way to the united states. The group boarded a plane from Johannesburg on Sunday and are expected to land in Washington DC late on today.
This comes after a weekend full of speculation on when the afrikaners would leave for America. The South African government however painted the resettlement scheme as politically motivated rather than as a result of racial discrimination as stipulated by the United states.
Tensions between South Africa and The United States have been high following Trump’s executive order back in February that described the afrikaners as victims of racial discrimination.
The US criticised south african policy accusing the government for taking land from white farmers without any compensation, something that South Africa refutes saying it has not happened.
The government of South Africa has been accused of enacting “racist ownership laws” and of committing a “genocide of white people” by Elon Musk, a prominent Trump adviser who was born in South Africa.
There is widespread disbelief in the claims of a white genocide.
South Africa’s foreign ministry said in a statement on Friday that the US’s resettlement plan was an attempt to weaken the nation’s “constitutional democracy” and that claims the government discriminated against the white minority were “unfounded.”
President Trump assigned his administration the responsibility of developing plans to perhaps resettle Afrikaners in the United States, which has caused tensions between the two countries for a while.
