US State Department faces backlash over Afrikaner refugee admissions
Why the US State Department's Afrikaner refugee policy is under scrutiny.
Image: SAUL LOEB / AFP
The US State Department is under fire for welcoming white South Africans as refugees. The heat is coming from inside the country as citizens question the Donald Trump administration's intents.
The press questioned State Department Principal Deputy spokesperson Tommy Pigott on the basis for accepting white Afrikaners as refugees.
"The president has been very clear about the concerns he has about South Africa. He has expressed those publicly and often. When it comes to the arrivals we saw, the president identified a priority that we fulfilled," Pigott said.
He went on to claim that the Afrikaner refugees met the same standard as others. When asked about the speed in which the US government rushed to obtain refugee status for the Afrikaners, Pigott reiterated that it was Trump's concerns with South Africa that expedited the process.
"He has been clear for years about the abuses we are seeing in South Africa. He directed the State Department to implement that priority."
However, Pigott evaded answering whether or not a genocide is currently taking place in the country.
Former CNN Don Lemon called the administration's acceptance of white refugees a blatant racist policy through an imaginary genocide. On his YouTube channel, Lemon claimed that Trump is obsessed with the Afrikaner farmer.
"I think this is a window into who Trump has always been and who he thinks America belongs to," he added. "He is echoing far-right conspiracy theories about white genocide that have been bouncing around social media for years."
Lemon defended the Expropriation Act, claiming that it is an attempt by the government to rectify colonial and apartheid landgrabs.
"Trump is acting like it is a state-sponsored hate crime and that is a lie. People who have been reporting on this say they see Elon Musk's fingerprints all over this...Musk was born in Pretoria and raised in the twilight of apartheid. He has long been preoccupied with South African farmers and what he calls a slow white genocide."
President Cyril Ramaphosa has also criticised the Afrikaners who migrated to the US. Speaking at the Africa CEO Forum in Abidjan, Ivory Coast, Ramaphosa said that Afrikaners who have migrated to the US are not fleeing persecution, but rather because they refuse to accept the country's changing conditions.
"Those who have fled are not being persecuted, they’re not being hounded, they are not treated badly. They are leaving because they don’t want to embrace the changes that are taking place in our country and our Constitution," Ramaphosa said.
IOL Politics