Cape Town, South Africa (AP) – Representative Group Some of the white minority in South Africa Responded on Saturday President Donald Trump’s plan By providing them with refugee status and resettlement in the United States: thank you, but please do not thank you.
The plan is detailed in an executive order signed Friday, with all aid and finances to South Africa as punishment for saying that the Trump administration was a “infringement” on some white citizens. Support has been stopped.
The Trump administration accused South African government of allowing and introducing violent attacks against white African farmers Land Expropriation Act This allows for “seizure of minority African agricultural property without compensation.”
South African government has denied that there is a coordinated attack on white farmers, and Trump’s explanation of the new land law It’s full of misinformation and distortion.
Africans are not only derived primarily from the Dutch, but also the first French and German colonial settlers to arrive. In South Africa Over 300 years ago. They speak Afrikaans, a language derived from the Netherlands that developed in South Africa, and are different from other white South Africans who come from British and other backgrounds.
Together, white people make up about 7% of South Africa’s population of 62 million.
“We’re not going anywhere.”
On Saturday, two of the most prominent groups representing Africans said they would not take up Trump’s offer to resettle the country in the United States.
“Our members work here and want to stay here. They’re going to stay here,” said Dirk Herman, CEO of African Trade Union Solidarity. . “We promise to build a future here. We’re not going anywhere.”
At the same press conference, Kallie Kriel, CEO of Afrikaner Lobby Group Afriforum, said, “We have to categorize: we don’t want to move anywhere else.”
Trump’s move to sanction South Africa, a key US trading partner in Africa, came after him and him South African-born advisor Elon Musk He accused black leadership of having an anti-white attitude. But the portrayal of Africans as oppressed groups that need to be saved will surprise most South Africans.
“Ironically, it is ironic that the executive order stipulates the status of US refugees against one of the most economically privileged South African groups,” the South African Foreign Ministry said. I stated. He also criticised the Trump administration’s own policies, saying that its focus on Africans is “deporting vulnerable Americans in other parts of the world and denying exile.”
There was a “false information and propaganda campaign” targeting South Africa, the ministry said.
A spokesperson for Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa said, “South Africa is a constitutional democracy. We value all South Africans, black and white. Africans face arbitrary deprivation and therefore The claim that they need to flee from their birth country is an argument that lacks all truth.”
White people in South Africa are still common A much better standard of living From black people over 30 years after the end White minority apartheid system 1994. Despite being a minority, white people own about 70% of South Africa’s private farmland. A 2021 survey by the South African Human Rights Commission said 1% of white people are in poverty compared to 64% of black people.
Correct the mistakes of colonialism
Johannesburg market trader Sitabir Ngidi said he has never seen white people being abused in South Africa.
“He (Trump) should actually come from the US to South Africa and try to see what’s going on for him, taking the words of Elon Musk, who hasn’t lived in this country for the longest time. Not only that, “T even relates to South Africans,” Ngidi said.
However, Trump’s actions towards South Africa have paid international attention to the sentiment among white South Africans that he is discriminated against as a form of apartheid recall. The leader of the apartheid government was African.
Solidarity, Afriforum and others are strongly opposed to the new land expropriation law, saying it will be targeted by land owned by white people who have worked to develop the land for years. They also say that the recently passed equally controversial language laws are attempting to remove or limit Afrikaans in schools, but they often promote the interests of black people as racist laws. It criticizes positive policy of action in South Africa’s business.
“This government allows targeting certain sections of the population,” said Afriforum’s Kriel, who thanked Trump for bringing up the African case. However, Kriel said Africans are committed to South Africa.
The South African government has criticized the laws that have been criticized have put the difficult challenge of saving colonialism’s mistakes, and the hard challenge of apartheid for almost half a century when black people are stripped of their land and almost all their rights. They say it’s a purpose.
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Journalist Sebabatso Mosamo from the Associated Press in Johannesburg contributed to this report.
