The first group of White South Africans granted refugee status by the United States is scheduled to fly out of Johannesburg on Sunday, officials said.
The flight from Johannesburg’s OR Tambo Airport was scheduled to depart around 2 p.m. ET for Dakar, where it would refuel before continuing to Washington, D.C. The group consists of 49 Afrikaner South Africans, the majority of whom are families, with a few young couples in their twenties and older people.
“The application for the permit (to land) said it’s the Afrikaners who are relocating to the USA as refugees,” Collen Msibi, a spokesperson for the South African Transport Ministry, told AFP.
The plane, a US charter aircraft, is scheduled to arrive at Washington’s Dulles International Airport around 6 a.m. on Monday and then fly to Texas.
Msibi stated that his department had not received any further applications for resettlement flights.
According to government documents obtained by CBS News last week, US officials plan to host a press conference at Dulles Airport on Monday to welcome the group. According to sources familiar with the effort, the plan’s timing could change.
In February, President Trump issued an executive order directing officials to use the United States’ refugee program to resettle Afrikaners, a South African ethnic group comprised of descendants of European colonists.
At the time, Mr. Trump alleged that White South Africans faced “government-sponsored race-based discrimination.” He cited a law that U.S. conservatives, including South African-born Elon Musk, claim allows for racially motivated seizures of land owned by White South Africans. The land expropriation law is intended to address inequalities that persisted under the former apartheid system.
South Africa’s government has categorically denied any land confiscation or racially motivated discrimination.
The hastily arranged initiative to welcome Afrikaners stands in stark contrast to the Trump administration’s decision to bar most other refugees from entering the United States.
Afrikaners granted refugee status have also been processed at an unusually fast rate. Prior to Mr. Trump’s second term, the State Department stated that the refugee process took an average of 18 to 24 months to complete due to background checks, medical screenings, and interviews. Afrikaners preparing to travel to the United States completed the process in months, if not weeks.
Meanwhile, relations between South Africa and the United States have deteriorated this year over a variety of domestic and foreign policy issues, culminating in Washington’s expulsion of Pretoria’s ambassador in March.
Mr. Trump stated in March that any South African farmer seeking to “flee” would have a “rapid pathway” to US citizenship, despite suspending all other refugee arrivals to the United States immediately after taking office in January.
On Friday, South Africa’s foreign ministry stated that the resettlement of Afrikaners “under the guise of being’refugees’ is entirely politically motivated and designed to question South Africa’s constitutional democracy”.
It would, however, “not prevent citizens who wish to leave the country from doing so,” it stated.
According to a statement from the State Department, the American Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, has been interviewing those who have applied for resettlement to the United States in response to Mr. Trump’s directive to welcome Afrikaners and is still receiving inquiries.
“While we are unable to comment on individual cases, the Department of State is prioritizing consideration for U.S. refugee resettlement of Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination,” according to the agency.
White South Africans, who account for 7.3% of the population, generally have a higher standard of living than the black majority in the country.
The brutal race-based apartheid system was imposed primarily by Afrikaner-led governments, denying political and economic rights to Black South Africans, who constituted 75% of the population. In 1994, the country allowed equal voting, which resulted in the election of Nelson Mandela as the first Black Prime Minister.
