Trump grants asylum to 49 white South Africans, claiming they suffer racial discrimination.

BarcelonaA first convoy of 49 white South Africans has left their country on a private plane for the United States, after the US administration deemed them to be suffering from racial discrimination and granted them refugee status. In a gesture that sours relations with the South African government, US President Donald Trump offered asylum to the Afrikaners—descendants of former Dutch settlers—as part of a new program announced in February, offering to resettle them in the United States. The Afrikaner families left Johannesburg on Sunday and are expected to arrive in Washington this morning, before traveling to Texas.

In February, the US president signed an executive order to reduce financial aid to South Africa and accused the Black-led government of racial discrimination against whites, to whom he offered asylum. The order also referred to a law signed by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa that allowed for the expropriation of land with "zero compensation" in specific circumstances, in an attempt to mitigate the harmful effects of apartheid on the Black population in South Africa.

During apartheid, white Afrikaner leaders, primarily descendants of Dutch and French settlers who began colonizing the country in 1652, violently repressed the country's Black majority. More than three decades after the end of the supremacist regime, three-quarters of the land is still in the hands of whites, who represent 7% of the population, while the Black population accounts for 81%. Furthermore, Afrikaners have 20 times the wealth of the Black majority, according to the international academic journal Review of Political Economy.

Greuge with the rest of the refugees

Refugee organizations denounce the grievance between these applications and the rest, many of which are from people fleeing countries at war or natural disasters. In fact, refugee status verification is a procedure that often takes years to resolve in the United States. And while the Trump administration has expedited the reception of white South Africans, it is placing obstacles to arrivals from Afghanistan, Iraq, and most of sub-Saharan Africa, a measure investigated by several courts.

When Trump accuses South Africa of pursuing racist policies against whites, the Pretoria government counters by claiming that whites are not persecuted and accuses him of wanting to capitalize on an internal political issue it doesn't understand. "The government unequivocally states that these people are not refugees," South African Foreign Ministry spokesperson Chrispin Phiri told local radio station Newzroom Afrika. But he assured that he will not stand in the "way" of the US administration.

The alleged racial discrimination against white South Africans has become a common argument in the most conservative right-wing talk shows in the United States. One of the leaders who has used it is the owner of Tesla and X, Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa. On Friday, the White House maintained that this was the first step in a "much larger resettlement effort." White House deputy chief of staff Stephen Miller assured that what was happening to the Afrikaners in South Africa "fits the textbook definition of why the refugee program was created." "This is persecution based on a protected characteristic; in this case, race," he said.

This is not the first disagreement Trump has had with the African country. The rough seas between the two powers surfaced in the wake of South Africa's accusation of genocide against Israel before the International Court of Justice in The Hague for the crimes committed in Gaza, and worsened with Trump's return to the White House, who withdrew all aid to Pretoria, accusing the South African government of "confiscating" land.