Trump threatens to cut off funding for South Africa over land act
U.S. President Donald Trump says he will cut off funding for South Africa over a new land expropriation policy. South Africa defended itself on Monday against attacks on the policy by Trump and his billionaire backer Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa.
Reuters
A group of 49 white South Africans were warmly greeted by the Trump administration upon their arrival at Dulles Airport near Washington, D.C., on Monday after they were granted refugee status as victims of racial discrimination.
In a jarring departure from the Trump administration’s posture towards all other refugees, Deputy Secretary of State Chris Landau personally welcomed the group, saying he respected “what you had to deal with” and “the long tradition of your people.”
“Welcome to the United States of America. It is such an honor for us to receive you here today,” Landau told the group, many of them holding American flags.
Hours after he took office, President Donald Trump shut down the refugee resettlement program, effectively ending a pathway for refugees fleeing violence and persecution to secure asylum in the U.S. and choking off all funding for refugee resettlement.
“I hope and I trust that the American people have very open hearts. We are a very accepting, we’re a very friendly, welcoming people,” Landau told the Afrikaners.
The Trump administration granted the group refugee status on the basis of what it calls anti-white discrimination from South Africa’s government. Trump authorized South Africans to be resettled as refugees in a February executive order that took aim at a law enacted year that authorized the South African government to seize property. It also criticized South Africa for leading the United Nations case accusing Israel of committing genocide against Palestinians in its war with Hamas.
South Africa has called the accusations “unfounded” and said they do not meet the “threshold of persecution required under domestic and international refugee law.”
Elon Musk, who is South African, has accused the government of discriminating against its white population since before he joined the Trump administration as a special government employee and head of the Department of Government Efficiency.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a law authorizing the government to seize land without compensation the owner in January. Decades after the country’s racist apartheid system ended, its white minority still owns a majority of land.
Laura Thompson Osuri, the executive director of Homes Without Borders, was among three protesters demonstrating near the airport’s check-in counters as the South Africans arrived on Monday afternoon. “Afrikaners are not refugees,” read her protest sign.
“They’re letting in these Afrikaners as quote, unquote refugees, while tens of thousands…that are actual refugees are not allowed to enter,” Osuri said.
Osuri, whose organization helps refugees resettle in the Washington area, called admitting the Afrikaners as the Trump administration has shut down channels for refugees from other countries “absurd.”
“It’s just performative,” she said. “They’re not fleeing war, violence, persecution.”
Trump’s shutdown of all refugee admissions – except for white South Africans – has drawn heavy criticism from humanitarian organizations.
The Episcopal Church’s migration ministry said on Monday it would end all its refugee resettlement grant agreements after the Trump administration asked it to help resettle the Afrikaners.
“It has been painful to watch one group of refugees, selected in a highly unusual manner, receive preferential treatment over many others who have been waiting in refugee camps or dangerous conditions for years,” Sean Rowe, the ministry’s presiding bishop, said in a letter.