South African President Cyril Ramaphosa characterized the flight of Afrikaners from his country as an act of cowardice.
Approximately 59 Afrikaner refugees arrived in the United States on Monday as the White House decried the “genocide” happening against the white population of South Africa.
Instead of helping the efforts to dismantle the nation’s apartheid-era inequalities that benefited white citizens until 1994, Ramaphosa said their decision to leave was a “sad moment for them.”
“As South Africans, we are resilient. We don’t run away from our problems,” Ramaphosa said. “We must stay here and solve our problems. When you run away, you are a coward, and that’s a real cowardly act.”
“I can bet you that they will be back soon because there is no country like South Africa,” he added.
Afrikaners formed a rigid ethnic identity after settling in South Africa in the mid-1600s. They dominated the political and business elite of South Africa until the end of apartheid in 1994. Presently, many Afrikaner activists and observers believe the group is being purposefully subjected to violence from the black majority, with the government being complicit.
Attacks against white Afrikaner farmers are a highly controversial matter. The government doesn’t keep statistics regarding the number of white farmers killed, but news of particularly brutal attacks has enraged many Afrikaners. These attacks are often accompanied by extensive torture, rape, and mutilation.
The South African government has emphatically denied any bias against Afrikaners and has maintained that white farmers are victims of a larger crime wave.
However, the White House has been unambiguous in its assessment of the situation.
“Farmers are being killed. They happen to be white,” Trump said Monday. “But whether they’re white or black makes no difference to me, but white farmers are being brutally killed and their land is being confiscated in South Africa, and the newspaper and the television media don’t even talk about it.”
“I don’t care about their race, their color, their height, their weight — I don’t care about anything,” Trump continued. “I just know that what’s happening is terrible.”
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Trump also punished South Africa on a diplomatic level. He withheld the U.S. government’s participation in the G20 summit scheduled to be held in South Africa later this year.
South African Ambassador to the U.S. Ebrahim Rasool was declared a persona non grata and ordered to leave the country by Secretary of State Marco Rubio, who called him a “race-baiting politician who hates America and hates [Trump].”
Brady Knox contributed to this report.
