The United States embassy in South Africa said on Thursday it received a list of nearly 70,000 people interested in refugee status in the US under President Donald Trump’s plan to relocate members of a white minority group he claims are victims of racial discrimination by their black-led government.
The list was given to the embassy by the South African Chamber of Commerce in the United States, which said it became a point of contact for white South Africans asking about the programme announced by the Trump administration last month. The chamber said the list does not constitute official applications.
Trump issued an executive order on February 7 cutting US funding to South Africa and citing “government actions fuelling disproportionate violence against racially disfavoured landowners”.
Trump’s executive order specifically referred to Afrikaners, a white minority group who are descendants of mainly Dutch and French colonial settlers who first came to South Africa in the 17th century.
The order directed Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem to prioritise humanitarian relief to Afrikaners who are victims of “unjust racial discrimination” and resettle them in the US under the refugee programme.
There are around 2.7 million Afrikaners in South Africa, which has a population of 62 million. Trump’s decision to offer some white South Africans refugee status went against his larger policy to halt the US refugee resettlement programme.
The South African government has said that Trump’s allegations that it is targeting Afrikaners through a land expropriation law are inaccurate and largely driven by misinformation.
