CNN
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A group of 59 white South Africans arrived in the United States last week after being given refugee status by the White House.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa is scheduled to meet US Donald Trump in Washington on Wednesday, calling for a reset of ties with the US. Since Trump freezes aid in South Africa in February, relations between the two countries have been baffled since claiming it abuses a small number of white populations.
The South African government said “restructuring bilateral, economic and commercial relations” was the concrete focus of Ramaphosa’s visit to the US. Ramaphosa said white South Africans who have arrived in the United States “doesn’t fit the bill” because they have the refugee status as someone who excludes their country from fear of persecution.
But thousands more Africans want to enter the United States, so others don’t need refugee status, but instead seek American help and either tackle the wave of violent crime in South Africa or even establish an autonomous state within the nation.
Joost Strydom heads a group of white South Africans who rejected the US offer of asylum and a separatist “African-only” settlement in the country’s Northern Cape.
“Help us here,” he said his message was on Trump. He wants to recognize Orania’s quest for self-determination.
“We don’t want to leave here,” he told CNN. “We don’t want to be refugees in the United States.”
Home to around 3,000 Africans, the 8,000 hectares (19,800 acres) of Orania is partially self-governed. Their own white enclave creates half of their own electricity needs, receives local taxes and prints their own currency, pinned to South African rands. However, settlement residents want more. It is the perception of an independent nation.
Strydom was part of Orania’s US delegation in late March to promote this goal.
“We met with government officials,” he said. “The conversation is ongoing and that’s what we decided to be inconspicuous.”
Orania is underpinned by the 1994 Apartheid Agreement, which allowed African self-determination, including the concept of an African nation called Volkstoart.
Strydom expects the reconciliation to develop into a “national home for the African people.”
Africans are descendants of South Africa’s predominantly Dutch settlers, and South Africans, who occupy about 7% of the country’s population as of 2022, have a share of a decline from 11% in 1996. The discriminatory apartheid government led by Africans lost its power in the mid-1990s and was replaced by a multi-party democracy ruled by the African National Congress.
At least 67,000 South Africans have expressed interest in seeking refugee status in the United States, according to the US Chamber of Commerce (Sacca).
In comments justifying his decision to resettle Africans in the US, Trump argued that “genocide is taking place” in South Africa, adding that “white farmers were brutally killed and their land was confiscated.”
South African authorities have strongly denied such claims. In a February statement, South African police said “only one farmer who happens to be white” was killed between October 1st and December 31st, urging them to “stop the assumption that farm murders belong to the same past as white farmers.”
Police Minister Seno Mchunu stressed in a recent statement that there is no evidence of “white genocide” in the country.
Police crime figures for the last quarter of 2024 were contested by African advocacy group Afriforum. Afriforum alleged that five farm owners were killed for those months, and that police underreported actual numbers.
Afriforum has documented farm murders in South Africa for years. The 2023 report stated that there were at least 77 farm attacks and nine murders in the first quarter of that year, roughly equivalent to 80 attacks and 11 murders recorded in the same period in 2022.
Most of the attacks took place in Gauteng, the group said. Garten has the largest concentration of South Africa’s white population, according to the country’s last census of 2022, with about 1.5 million white people living there.
Afrikaner farmer Adriaan Vos is the latest victim of a farm attack in Gauteng. The 55-year-old said he was fighting for his life just two months ago after being shot at the farm in Glenharvey, the town of West Naria, west of Gauten.
“I was shot twice in the knee and once in the back,” Vos said of his attack on the farm early on March 16th.
“Fortunately, the bullet stuck next to my lungs,” he said, adding that his farmhouse had been plundered and lit on the same night.
VOS cannot identify the attacker and it is not known whether the attack is racially motivated. However, the attack appears to be part of a long-standing pattern of farm attacks in South Africa. This is a country that is working on one of the highest murder rates in the world. South African authorities rarely publish crime figures by race, but local media reports that most murder victims are black.
Westonaria police told CNN that the attack on the VOS farm “is known suspects” and “there are no clues as to who the attacker is.”
South African leader Ramaphosa doesn’t think Africans are being persecuted – claims by Trump and his allies Elon Musk, who were born and raised domestically, and those fleeing to America are described as “co-sicks” who oppose government efforts to unleash their legacy of apartheid, particularly legacy of inequality.
One of these efforts was the enactment of the January expropriation law controversy. This allows South African governments to take the land and redistribute it.
Under apartheid, black South Africans forcibly confiscated their land for the benefit of white people. Today, about 30 years after racism officially ended in the country, black people, who make up more than 80% of the country’s population, own around 4% of private land, but 72% are held by white people.
Who is back for Africans? What do they want?
For some Africans in Orania, if they choose to become American refugees, they can lose more than they benefit.
Based on arid lands described as “an abandoned ghost town” with extreme weather, Orania has witnessed the growth of its infrastructure, and is the most realistic place to preserve African culture and heritage.
“If I were to America, I have to give up my language and culture for the sake of the American language and culture. I will abandon my God-given identity as an African for something foreign,” the 24-year-old Tomlinson told CNN.
The departure of Orania to the United States is not also included in the card of 70-year-old retired church minister Sarrel Roett, who moved to town in 2019. Orania offers him a “quiet and lonely life.”
“It’s very common to see it in hatred when traveling outside Orania, South Africa,” he added.
While both Loeto and Tomlinson want Trump’s perception of Orania, the legitimacy of the separatist town has been questioned by other South Africans, including members of the Economic Freedom Warrior (EFF), which states that “Africa-only” policies “institutionalize exclusion” and “Africa-only” policies.
The South African Foreign Ministry said Orania does not have a national status within the nation and remains bound by South African law.
Beyond Orania, other Africans such as VOS, who are still injured, are not going to leave despite the pressure the farmers felt.
“I’m lucky to be alive,” he said. “I have to take care of this place (his farmland).
However, Voss warned that he needed to help quickly as he outlined that Ramaphosa wanted us to convey the opposite numbers when he visited the White House.
“I don’t know if I’ll wake up tomorrow, so I need help in South Africa. I’m confused here,” he said.
“Hopefully he (Ramaphosa) can be open about everything (with Trump). He has to come, do it and implement it. And let’s try again.”
