About those South Africans Trump says can come. They said nope.
On Saturday, two of the most prominent groups representing Afrikaners said they would not be taking up Trump’s offer of resettlement in the U.S.
“Our members work here, and want to stay here, and they are going to stay here,” said Dirk Hermann, chief executive of the Afrikaner trade union Solidarity, which says it represents around 2 million people. “We are committed to build a future here. We are not going anywhere.”
At the same press conference, Kallie Kriel, the CEO of the Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum, said: “We have to state categorically: We don’t want to move elsewhere.”
Trump’s move to sanction South Africa, a key U.S. trading partner in Africa, came after he and his South African-born adviser Elon Musk have accused its Black leadership of having an anti-white stance. But the portrayal of Afrikaners as a downtrodden group that needed to be saved would surprise most South Africans.
“It is ironic that the executive order makes provision for refugee status in the U.S. for a group in South Africa that remains amongst the most economically privileged,” South Africa’s Foreign Ministry said. It also criticized the Trump administration’s own policies, saying the focus on Afrikaners came “while vulnerable people in the U.S. from other parts of the world are being deported and denied asylum despite real hardship.”
https://apnews.com/article/trump-south-africa-afrikaners-0120efec17122b47e3371e0e39fe1db8