Afrikaner group that left for US were not disadvantaged in SA: Expert

Immigration expert Professor Loren Landau has described the departure of the so- called Afrikaner refugees to the United States absurd and performative.

This is after the first batch of 49 people who left South Africa arrived in the US- following US President Donald Trump’s Executive Order allowing white Afrikaners, who claim discrimination, to acquire an expedited path to citizenship in the United States.

“The only thing I can come up with, is absurd, or ridiculous, but also deeply disappointing. If we look at the people who’ve been taken and I don’t know who they are individually, but we know who they are as a group. This is not a group that is persecuted, they’re not a group that has been-as a group, particularly disadvantaged and they are going as the only refugees now being resettled from Africa and really from the world to the United States. So, if we’re saying there’s a deserving population that needs protection, that needs to find safety somewhere else, this absolutely not that group.”

Meanwhile, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) says there is no basis to identify the group of white Afrikaners resettling in the US as refugees.

They departed OR Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg yesterday.

DIRCO spokesperson Chrispin Phiri says while everyone has the right to leave the country, they should not do so under false pretenses.

“If there were refugees, South Africa would be the only country in the world where so-called persecuted persons are judges, ministers. So really, the designation that these individuals are being persecuted on the grounds of race and language is completely unfounded. If individuals want to leave and go to another country by any means, the Constitution allows you to do so; we have not stood in their way. But what we categorically are clear about is that these are not refugees.”