The head of South Africa\u2019s largest agricultural association said white-owned farms are frequently invaded \u2018by local politicians and radical groups.\u2019<\/h5>\n\n\n\n![\"Afrikaners](\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/_next\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.com%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F05%2F24%2Fid5862944-Afrikaners-GettyImages-2214152819-1080x720.jpg&w=1200&q=75\")
The first group of Afrikaners from South Africa, to arrive for resettlement, listen to remarks from U.S. Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau and U.S. Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security Troy Edgar (both out of frame), after they arrived at Washington Dulles International Airport in Dulles, Va., on May 12, 2025. Saul Loeb\/AFP via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nBy Darren Taylor<\/p>\n\n\n\n
JOHANNESBURG\u2014President Donald Trump\u2019s decision<\/a> to allow white Afrikaners to seek asylum in the United States from state-sponsored \u201cracial discrimination,\u201d \u201chateful rhetoric,\u201d and \u201cdisproportionate violence\u201d in South Africa has not gone down well in some quarters.<\/p>\n\n\n\nSouth African President Cyril Ramaphosa described them as \u201ccowards,\u201d according to the BBC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On May 22, during a meeting with Ramaphosa in the Oval Office, Trump presented what he said was evidence of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Showing printouts of news articles and footage of South African extremists calling for white farmers to be killed, Trump repeated the allegation that the South African government is confiscating white-owned land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When Ramaphosa denied this, Trump maintained: \u201cYou do allow them to take land\u2014and then when they take the land, they kill the white farmer, and when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cYou\u2019re taking people\u2019s land away from them, and those people, in many cases, are being executed. They\u2019re being executed, and they happen to be white.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The U.S. State Department has said it will continue to welcome<\/a> Afrikaners who are \u201cvictims of unjust racial discrimination\u201d and \u201cable to articulate a past experience of persecution or fear of future persecution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\nSouth Africa\u2019s International Relations Minister, Ronald Lamola, told The Epoch Times that Trump and his administration are \u201ctotally misguided\u201d in offering asylum to Afrikaners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWho can provide proof of any persecution of a specific race in South Africa?\u201d he asked. \u201cThere\u2019s no proof. There\u2019s no type of persecution or discrimination against any whites in South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Epoch Times has been told by a source connected to the U.S. Embassy in Johannesburg that many of the 8,000 Afrikaner applications for asylum reviewed so far contain \u201chorrific details\u201d of crimes committed against them or their close relatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey believe these crimes happened to them because they are white,\u201d said the source, requesting anonymity because he did not have permission to speak with the media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese crimes were documented in cases opened by the South African police, and in many cases the perpetrators have never been found. These people can\u2019t get any information about what\u2019s happened to their cases. It appears there have been no investigations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On May 13, the first group of 59 Afrikaners was welcomed in Washington by Deputy Secretary of State, Christopher Landau, and Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, Troy Edgar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe deputy secretary and I just spoke to some of the folks who arrived on this flight, and they tell quite harrowing stories of the violence that they\u2019ve faced in South Africa that was not addressed by the authorities, by the unjust application of the law,\u201d Landau said<\/a> in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\nHe said \u201ca fair number\u201d of the asylum seekers that had arrived in the United States were farmers who had farmed their land for generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cNow, [they] face the threat\u2014not only of expropriation\u2014but also of direct violence \u2026 Many of these folks have experience with threatening invasions of their homes\u2014their farms\u2014and a real lack of interest or success of the government in doing anything about this situation,\u201d Landau said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hours earlier, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that there\u2019s a genocide in South Africa, with the victims often white farmers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWhether they\u2019re white or black makes no difference to me,\u201d said Trump. \u201cBut white farmers are brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In January, Ramaphosa signed<\/a> an Expropriation Bill into law that gives his government the power to seize private property, including farms, without paying owners.<\/p>\n\n\n\nPretoria says the \u201cnil compensation\u201d clause in the act will only be used when it is \u201cequitable and in the public interest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"President](\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/_next\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.com%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F05%2F21%2Fid5861279-GettyImages-2215659171-600x453.jpg&w=1200&q=75\")
President Donald Trump holds up a picture as he meets with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office, on May 21, 2025. Jim Watson\/AFP via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nAt the moment, \u201cthere\u2019s no state-supported confiscation of farms happening,\u201d said Jaco Minnaar, who heads South Africa\u2019s largest agricultural association, AgriSA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But, he told The Epoch Times, white-owned farms are \u201cfrequently\u201d invaded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThese land invasions are often instigated by local politicians and radical groups. A farmer will wake up and there will be a large group of people occupying a section of his farm,\u201d Minnaar said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIn many cases the police are slow to act, or they don\u2019t act at all, and the large group turns into a squatter camp, and the farm is rendered worthless.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to South African news agency Ground Up, several courts have found<\/a> that criminal syndicates are perpetrating \u201cland grabs,\u201d with white landowners often the victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\nBennie van Zyl, who leads the Transvaal Agricultural Union, which represents thousands of Afrikaner farmers, told The Epoch Times the murders of white farmers and their families are often \u201cvery brutal, with torture involved, but it can\u2019t yet be defined as a white genocide \u2026 and there\u2019s no evidence that the government is involved.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Lamola said the murders of white farmers are \u201cpart of a normal crime trend.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
However, University of Stellenbosch criminologist Guy Lamb said there\u2019s \u201cnothing normal\u201d about crime in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe country has one of the highest murder and rape rates in the world,\u201d he told The Epoch Times. \u201cThere\u2019s a sense that South Africans of all races are under siege from criminals, with the state unable to protect them. So the fact that Trump\u2019s Afrikaners are telling the U.S. government horror stories about crime is not shocking at all. Most South Africans have similar stories to tell.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Isolated in rural areas, white farmers in particular are \u201ceasy targets,\u201d Lamb said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThey\u2019re attacked not because they\u2019re white, but because they\u2019re perceived to have money and firearms,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Demonstrators](\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/_next\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.com%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F05%2Fid5856637-1.tagreuters.com2025binary_LYNXMPEL4B09P-FILEDIMAGE-1200x810.jpg&w=1200&q=75\")
Demonstrators hold placards in support of U.S. President Donald Trump’s stance against what he calls racist laws, land expropriation, and farm attacks, outside the American Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, on Feb. 15, 2025. Siphiwe Sibeko\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nMax du Preez, a veteran South African journalist, described South Africa as \u201ca country at war with itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLook, we aren\u2019t Ukraine where cities are being bombed. But we are a country where a lot of men consider rape to be a sport,\u201d he told The Epoch Times: \u201cWe are a country where murder is extremely common and very few are ever solved. Violent crime is everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to the latest government statistics, South Africa recorded 5,727 murders<\/a> from January to March. In that same period, 10,688 rapes were reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe country\u2019s official unemployment rate is almost 33 percent. An expanded definition of unemployment, which includes those who\u2019ve given up looking for work, is more than 43 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Du Preez said, \u201cSo we have millions of black people, especially jobless youth, with nothing to do all day. They\u2019re angry. If there\u2019s going to be a race revolution, this is where it\u2019s coming from. It\u2019s a ticking time bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
He said Trump\u2019s executive order and offer of asylum to Afrikaners \u201cis part of a narrative of fear that\u2019s been pervasive in white South Africa, and elsewhere, for generations: The fear of a black uprising that results in the mass killing of whites similar to the Rwandan genocide \u2026 The fear that blacks finally take revenge on whites for apartheid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Several leftist and extremist groups in South Africa have suggested exactly this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Black First Land First movement<\/a> has repeatedly called for whites to be killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\nJulius Malema, the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), South Africa\u2019s fourth largest political party, often sings a song called \u201cKill the farmer,\u201d and has said a \u201crevolution\u201d of poor black people is coming to drive whites out of South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a war between white supremacy and black consciousness. You must know the two will never meet. We are in a permanent war with white supremacists,\u201d he said, according<\/a> to South Africa\u2019s Human Rights Commission, a government-funded organization. The agency has, on numerous occasions, found Malema not guilty of hate speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.theepochtimes.com\/_next\/image?url=https%3A%2F%2Fimg.theepochtimes.com%2Fassets%2Fuploads%2F2025%2F02%2F12%2Fid5808751-GettyImages-1236174247-1200x800.jpg&w=1200&q=75\")
A general view of soy beans being planted in a field on a farm in Balfour, South Africa, on Oct. 20, 2021. Phill Magakoe\/AFP via Getty Images<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\nProfessor Hein Willemse of the Afrikaans Department at the University of Pretoria, said many Afrikaners feel \u201cbesieged.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cLand is very important to the Afrikaner. Most successful commercial farmers are Afrikaners,\u201d he told The Epoch Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTake their land away and take away their rights to mother tongue education\u2014which we also see happening\u2014and their rights to employment, through affirmative action, plus the fact that they\u2019re often victims of crime, and they feel backed into a corner. They feel their culture is being erased.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
By Darren Taylor<\/p>\n\n\n\n
JOHANNESBURG\u2014President Donald Trump\u2019s decision<\/a> to allow white Afrikaners to seek asylum in the United States from state-sponsored \u201cracial discrimination,\u201d \u201chateful rhetoric,\u201d and \u201cdisproportionate violence\u201d in South Africa has not gone down well in some quarters.<\/p>\n\n\n\n South African President Cyril Ramaphosa described them as \u201ccowards,\u201d according to the BBC.<\/p>\n\n\n\n On May 22, during a meeting with Ramaphosa in the Oval Office, Trump presented what he said was evidence of this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Showing printouts of news articles and footage of South African extremists calling for white farmers to be killed, Trump repeated the allegation that the South African government is confiscating white-owned land.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When Ramaphosa denied this, Trump maintained: \u201cYou do allow them to take land\u2014and then when they take the land, they kill the white farmer, and when they kill the white farmer, nothing happens to them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cYou\u2019re taking people\u2019s land away from them, and those people, in many cases, are being executed. They\u2019re being executed, and they happen to be white.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The U.S. State Department has said it will continue to welcome<\/a> Afrikaners who are \u201cvictims of unjust racial discrimination\u201d and \u201cable to articulate a past experience of persecution or fear of future persecution.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n South Africa\u2019s International Relations Minister, Ronald Lamola, told The Epoch Times that Trump and his administration are \u201ctotally misguided\u201d in offering asylum to Afrikaners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWho can provide proof of any persecution of a specific race in South Africa?\u201d he asked. \u201cThere\u2019s no proof. There\u2019s no type of persecution or discrimination against any whites in South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Epoch Times has been told by a source connected to the U.S. Embassy in Johannesburg that many of the 8,000 Afrikaner applications for asylum reviewed so far contain \u201chorrific details\u201d of crimes committed against them or their close relatives.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey believe these crimes happened to them because they are white,\u201d said the source, requesting anonymity because he did not have permission to speak with the media.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese crimes were documented in cases opened by the South African police, and in many cases the perpetrators have never been found. These people can\u2019t get any information about what\u2019s happened to their cases. It appears there have been no investigations.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n On May 13, the first group of 59 Afrikaners was welcomed in Washington by Deputy Secretary of State, Christopher Landau, and Deputy Secretary of Homeland Security, Troy Edgar.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe deputy secretary and I just spoke to some of the folks who arrived on this flight, and they tell quite harrowing stories of the violence that they\u2019ve faced in South Africa that was not addressed by the authorities, by the unjust application of the law,\u201d Landau said<\/a> in a statement.<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said \u201ca fair number\u201d of the asylum seekers that had arrived in the United States were farmers who had farmed their land for generations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cNow, [they] face the threat\u2014not only of expropriation\u2014but also of direct violence \u2026 Many of these folks have experience with threatening invasions of their homes\u2014their farms\u2014and a real lack of interest or success of the government in doing anything about this situation,\u201d Landau said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Hours earlier, Trump told reporters in the Oval Office that there\u2019s a genocide in South Africa, with the victims often white farmers.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWhether they\u2019re white or black makes no difference to me,\u201d said Trump. \u201cBut white farmers are brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n In January, Ramaphosa signed<\/a> an Expropriation Bill into law that gives his government the power to seize private property, including farms, without paying owners.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Pretoria says the \u201cnil compensation\u201d clause in the act will only be used when it is \u201cequitable and in the public interest.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n At the moment, \u201cthere\u2019s no state-supported confiscation of farms happening,\u201d said Jaco Minnaar, who heads South Africa\u2019s largest agricultural association, AgriSA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n But, he told The Epoch Times, white-owned farms are \u201cfrequently\u201d invaded.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThese land invasions are often instigated by local politicians and radical groups. A farmer will wake up and there will be a large group of people occupying a section of his farm,\u201d Minnaar said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIn many cases the police are slow to act, or they don\u2019t act at all, and the large group turns into a squatter camp, and the farm is rendered worthless.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to South African news agency Ground Up, several courts have found<\/a> that criminal syndicates are perpetrating \u201cland grabs,\u201d with white landowners often the victims.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Bennie van Zyl, who leads the Transvaal Agricultural Union, which represents thousands of Afrikaner farmers, told The Epoch Times the murders of white farmers and their families are often \u201cvery brutal, with torture involved, but it can\u2019t yet be defined as a white genocide \u2026 and there\u2019s no evidence that the government is involved.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Lamola said the murders of white farmers are \u201cpart of a normal crime trend.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, University of Stellenbosch criminologist Guy Lamb said there\u2019s \u201cnothing normal\u201d about crime in South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThe country has one of the highest murder and rape rates in the world,\u201d he told The Epoch Times. \u201cThere\u2019s a sense that South Africans of all races are under siege from criminals, with the state unable to protect them. So the fact that Trump\u2019s Afrikaners are telling the U.S. government horror stories about crime is not shocking at all. Most South Africans have similar stories to tell.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Isolated in rural areas, white farmers in particular are \u201ceasy targets,\u201d Lamb said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey\u2019re attacked not because they\u2019re white, but because they\u2019re perceived to have money and firearms,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Max du Preez, a veteran South African journalist, described South Africa as \u201ca country at war with itself.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLook, we aren\u2019t Ukraine where cities are being bombed. But we are a country where a lot of men consider rape to be a sport,\u201d he told The Epoch Times: \u201cWe are a country where murder is extremely common and very few are ever solved. Violent crime is everywhere.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n According to the latest government statistics, South Africa recorded 5,727 murders<\/a> from January to March. In that same period, 10,688 rapes were reported.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The country\u2019s official unemployment rate is almost 33 percent. An expanded definition of unemployment, which includes those who\u2019ve given up looking for work, is more than 43 percent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Du Preez said, \u201cSo we have millions of black people, especially jobless youth, with nothing to do all day. They\u2019re angry. If there\u2019s going to be a race revolution, this is where it\u2019s coming from. It\u2019s a ticking time bomb.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He said Trump\u2019s executive order and offer of asylum to Afrikaners \u201cis part of a narrative of fear that\u2019s been pervasive in white South Africa, and elsewhere, for generations: The fear of a black uprising that results in the mass killing of whites similar to the Rwandan genocide \u2026 The fear that blacks finally take revenge on whites for apartheid.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Several leftist and extremist groups in South Africa have suggested exactly this.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The Black First Land First movement<\/a> has repeatedly called for whites to be killed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Julius Malema, the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), South Africa\u2019s fourth largest political party, often sings a song called \u201cKill the farmer,\u201d and has said a \u201crevolution\u201d of poor black people is coming to drive whites out of South Africa.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cIt\u2019s a war between white supremacy and black consciousness. You must know the two will never meet. We are in a permanent war with white supremacists,\u201d he said, according<\/a> to South Africa\u2019s Human Rights Commission, a government-funded organization. The agency has, on numerous occasions, found Malema not guilty of hate speech.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Professor Hein Willemse of the Afrikaans Department at the University of Pretoria, said many Afrikaners feel \u201cbesieged.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cLand is very important to the Afrikaner. Most successful commercial farmers are Afrikaners,\u201d he told The Epoch Times.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cTake their land away and take away their rights to mother tongue education\u2014which we also see happening\u2014and their rights to employment, through affirmative action, plus the fact that they\u2019re often victims of crime, and they feel backed into a corner. They feel their culture is being erased.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n