[Image: Flickr]
While hoards of Saffas turned to social media to react to US President Donald Trump’s executive order relating to the refugee resettlement of Afrikaners whom he claims “are victims of unjust racial discrimination”, it looks like thousands of Afrikaans folk were incredibly keen to apply.
A deluge of more than 20,000 queries crashed the email server of the South African Chamber of Commerce in the US, the chamber told AFP.
In the executive order, dated 7 February and published by the White House, Trump cut off aid to South Africa, citing several reasons, including the recently enacted Expropriation Act. He also brought up the country’s aggressive positions towards the US and its allies, and government policies “designed to dismantle equal opportunity, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored [sic] landowners”.
The order also said the Secretary of State and the Secretary of Homeland Security would take “appropriate steps” to prioritise “humanitarian relief”, including “admission and resettlement through the United States Refugee Admissions Program, for Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination”.
Now Washington and Pretoria are locked in a diplomatic row over a land expropriation act that the US says will lead to the takeover of white-owned farms.
Trump, whose tycoon ally Elon Musk was born in South Africa, said last week that the law signed in January would “enable the government of South Africa to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation”.
The law allows the SA government, as a matter of public interest, to decide on expropriations without compensation – but only in exceptional circumstances – so the panic is slightly untoward.
South Africa’s foreign ministry has said Trump’s order “lacks factual accuracy and fails to recognise South Africa’s profound and painful history of colonialism and apartheid.
“It is ironic that the executive order makes provision for refugee status in the US for a group in South Africa that remains amongst the most economically privileged, while vulnerable people in the US from other parts of the world are being deported and denied asylum despite real hardship,” it added.
Not to mention how land ownership remains a contentious issue here, with most farmland still owned by white people three decades after the end of apartheid.
Some are outraged by the US’s reaction to this law, but there are also those witty South Africans who have chosen to laugh in the face of adversity, poking fun at Trump’s order, per News24.
Elon: I’m homesick. I miss SA. Haven’t spoken a word of Afrikaans for decades now.
Trump: I can bring them to you.
— Portia Gumede (@portiagumedesa) February 8, 2025
Why have Orania when you can have Orange County? https://t.co/t00d0d4lcX
— Ryan Cummings (@Pol_Sec_Analyst) February 8, 2025
The world is about to witness the first Genocide victims and refugees that don’t want to leave the country they’re in.
— Jangle leg (@kwets11) February 8, 2025
Also, since the refugee status is only being granted to Afrikaaners, does that mean English speaking white people aren’t being targeted by this white genocide? It’s tribe specific? So in effect, the government is being tribalist, no?
— Luna M (@tiredfeminist_) February 8, 2025
Souties waking up to find out the boere abandoned them in that in that executive order. pic.twitter.com/zmgE5Aa1dP
— Lester Kiewit (@lesterkk) February 8, 2025
Some questions: is there a test to determine your Afrikanership? Must you hold AfriForum membership? Can you take stuff with you? Will Elon help with some startup cash on the other side? Can you still come back for December holidays and so on? Are there bakkies in the US? https://t.co/3wmxZXpEPf
— Pieter Du Toit (@PieterDuToit) February 8, 2025
Somehow, still, there are a bunch of okes who are keen to apply.
“Our email server crashed over the weekend just due to the sheer volume of inquiries we have received,” Neil Diamond, head of the South African Chamber of Commerce in the US (SACCUSA), told AFP in an email.
“Given the scale of interest, SACCUSA estimates that this figure could represent over 50,000 individuals looking to leave South Africa and seek resettlement in the United States,” he said.
Looks like the jokester got it wrong.
For those taking up Trump’s invitation, may your biltong taste kak, your braais be brandy-less, your winters extra-cold, and do NOT ask us for DSTV log-ins to watch Chasing the Sun or KykNet abroad!
— GRAEME RAUBENHEIMER (@GraemeRauby) February 8, 2025
Diamond warned this could lead to a skills shortage in South Africa that would impact agriculture and other sectors of the economy.
“If we look at the EB-5, which is an investor visa, you need roughly about 15 to 20 million South African Rand (NZ$1.4m to NZ$1.9m) to be able to immigrate … What is alarming to us is the large volume of people that is interested in taking up this opportunity,” he said.
Some farmers are worried that the new land laws could lead to the confiscation of white-owned farms as carried out in neighbouring Zimbabwe.
See the DA scramble to get on the court bid to annul the land law so that the Afrikaners will stay.
