Sawt Falasteen - Trump defends resettling white South Africans as refugees in US

Trump's remarks to reporters at the White House came just hours before an initial group of around 50 Afrikaners was set to arrive at an airport outside Washington.

The Republican president essentially halted refugee arrivals after taking office as part of his crackdown on immigration, but is making an exception for the white South Africans who are mainly descendants of Dutch settlers.

Trump, whose tycoon ally Elon Musk was born in South Africa, said white farmers were being killed in the country and repeated an allegation of "genocide" that has been widely dismissed as absurd.

"It's a terrible situation taking place," he said. "So we've essentially extended citizenship to those people to escape from that violence and come here.

Those being resettled just "happen to be white, but whether they're white or black makes no difference to me," he added.

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa dismissed claims Afrikaners were being persecuted and said he told Trump during a telephone conversation that what he is being told about their situation "is not true."

"A refugee is someone who has to leave their country out of fear of political persecution, religious persecution, or economic persecution," Ramaphosa said. "And they don't fit that bill."

"We're the only country on the continent where the colonizers came to stay and we have never driven them out of our country," he added at a forum in Abidjan.

South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola also scoffed at claims that white Afrikaners, mainly descendants of Dutch settlers, face persecution or are being targeted for murder.

Most victims of killings in South Africa are young black men in urban areas, according to official data.

"The crime that we have in South Africa affects everyone irrespective of race and gender," Lamola said.

- 'Beyond absurd' -

The group of 49 people left Johannesburg airport on a chartered flight on Sunday and are due to land Monday afternoon at Dulles Airport in Virginia.

Under eligibility guidelines published by the US embassy, applicants must either be of Afrikaner ethnicity or belong to a racial minority in South Africa.

They must also "be able to articulate a past experience of persecution or fear of future persecution."

Trump and Musk have accused the South African government of targeting Afrikaners with a controversial land seizure law enacted this year.

On Monday, Trump threatened to not attend an upcoming G20 summit in South Africa unless the "situation is taken care of."

America's biggest trading partner in Africa is also under fire from Washington for leading a case at the International Court of Justice accusing US-ally Israel of "genocidal" acts in its Gaza offensive, a claim Israel denies.

Many have expressed bemusement that whites could be assigned victim status in South Africa.

Prominent Afrikaner author Max du Preez said the resettlement was "beyond absurd."

"This is about Trump and MAGA, not about us. It's about their hatred for DEI," he told AFP, referring to diversity programs that have become a Trump target.

"The people who have now fled have probably been motivated by financial considerations and/or an unwillingness to live in a post-apartheid society where whites no longer call the shots," he said.

Whites, who make up 7.3 percent of the population, generally enjoy a higher standard of living than the Black majority. They still own two-thirds of farmland and on average earn three times as much as Black South Africans.

Mainly Afrikaner-led governments imposed the race-based apartheid system that denied the black majority political and economic rights until it was voted out in 1994.

H.Jarrar--SF-PST