Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00U.S. President Donald Trump's offer to take in white South Africans as refugees fleeing
00:05persecution may not spur quite the rush he anticipated.
00:10An executive order he signed on Friday provided for resettlement in the U.S. of, quote, Afrikaners
00:15in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination as refugees.
00:20Afrikaners are mostly white South African descendants of Dutch and French settlers,
00:24some tracing back their roots in the country to the 17th century, but it's not clear
00:27they want to flee the place they've called home for hundreds of years.
00:42That was the response from Neville van der Merwe, a white 78-year-old pensioner living
00:46in Cape Town.
00:48And he had this to say about Trump cutting off aid to his country.
01:00Trump is pushing back against a law signed last month by President Cyril Ramaphosa aimed
01:04at addressing the country's unequal land ownership.
01:07White South Africans make up less than a tenth of the country's population, but a legacy
01:11of the racist apartheid government left three quarters of privately owned land in the hands
01:15of the white minority.
01:17Over three and a half million black people were forced from their homes.
01:20The new law makes it easier for the state to expropriate land for what it says is the
01:23public interest.
01:28Ramaphosa's governing African National Congress, or ANC, has defended the measure and accused
01:33Trump of amplifying misinformation propagated by AfriForum, an Afrikaner-led group.
01:38And even that group, which lobbied Trump's previous administration on their cause, said
01:42it was not taking up his offer.
01:44We have to stay categorically.
01:48We don't want to move elsewhere.
01:50That's AfriForum CEO Kallie Creel speaking on Saturday.
01:54Alongside Creel was Philip Buys, who chairs the Solidarity Trade Union, a group that says
01:59it represents 600,000 Afrikaner families.
02:02We might disagree with the ANC, but we love the country.
02:07As in any community, there are individuals who wish to immigrate.
02:11But the repatriation of Afrikaners as refugees is not a solution for us.
02:18We want to build a future in South Africa.
02:21Some said they appreciated Trump's gesture.
02:23Werner van Niekerk is a carpenter in Bothezig.
02:25I think it's a very nice gesture from Donald Trump to offer us asylum over there.
02:31He did not say whether he planned to take up the offer.