According to the Department of State, this year the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program admitted fewer refugees than at any time since the fall of Saigon in 1975. All but three of the 10,258 admitted were white Afrikaners from South Africa. Based on this data alone one might conclude that peace and prosperity had broken out all over the world, except for a sub-population group living at the southern tip of Africa. One would be wrong, however. According to the UN more than 2.5 million refugees need resettlement. By prioritizing white Afrikaners, the Trump Administration misreads the situation in South Africa, undermining both American interests and the drive for much needed reforms in that country.
Last year the Trump Administration announced its policy of offering Afrikaners refugee status due to the country’s high crime rate, racial discrimination, and the passage of a law that allows the government to expropriate private property without compensation. Most think the Expropriation Act of 2024 allows the government to target Afrikaners and deprive them of their land. In fact, the law allows for expropriation of all property from anyone of any race, including intellectual property, financial assets, and even artworks.
The Act is just the latest in a slew of wrongheaded policies championed by the leftist ruling African National Congress (ANC) government. Take one of the ANC’s key economic policies: Black Economic Empowerment (BEE), which imposes racial quotas in contracting, procurement, ownership, and management in all sectors of the economy. A policy touted to lift black South Africans out of poverty has become a vehicle for patronage and corruption. BEE essentially taxes capital on arrival and reduces competitiveness of SA businesses. While peer developing countries have been growing at around 4% per annum, South Africa barely manages growth above 1% because its investment rate has fallen to roughly half the peer average.
As a consequence, South Africa’s unemployment rate nears 34% and the ensuing joblessness means that the ANC is increasingly unpopular. Having won nearly 70% of the vote in 2004, ANC support fell to 40% in 2024, and polling shows support for the ruling party continues to decline.
Yet recent polling by SA’s Social Research Foundation reveals that only a fifth of South Africans support the Trump refugee policy - and number that holds true for both blacks and whites. This degree of racial consensus might surprise Americans but, on most issues, black and white South Africans share an extraordinary degree of common ground, even on the country’s most controversial policies.
When, for example, a July poll asked whether all American companies should be exempted from BEE policies to encourage investment and the creation of jobs, 55% of white and 60% of black South Africans agreed. That blacks reject BEE shouldn’t be surprising; the cost of this policy has also fallen on their shoulders in terms of joblessness and poverty, and earlier polls have shown that large majorities of blacks now reject the policy in favor of alternatives that prioritize investment.
South Africa has one of the world’s highest homicide rates, at around 40 per 100,000. By comparison, the homicide rate in the United States is between 5 and 6 per 100,000. South Africa’s commercial farmers suffer from attack and homicide rates estimated by recent research to be 2.94 times higher than the balance of the population and 6.7 times more lethal. But critically the research behind those numbers stress that the extent of the risk is shared evenly by black and white farmers.
It makes sense then that when asked whether they agree that the U.S. policy was justified because white Afrikaners were disproportionately affected by crime and by race-based economic policies, only 8.6% of all South Africans agreed. Among the majority white, Afrikaans Freedom Front Plus political party, only about one tenth agreed that Afrikaners are disproportionately affected by the ANC’s destructive policies.
When asked whether they would choose to move to the United States if the U.S. expanded its refugee program to those of all races, nearly 80% of those polled, both black and white, responded that they would rather remain in South Africa.
The U.S. played a critically important role in South Africa’s transition from apartheid to democracy. The country rapidly became the “rainbow nation” because notwithstanding the apartheid laws, South Africans of all races share fundamental values and agree on much more than they disagree. The country is centrist and pragmatic and just like ordinary Americans, South Africans want growth, stability, and opportunities for themselves and their children.
In casting South Africa’s problems as an Afrikaner vs. the others, white vs. black, dynamic the US threatens to undermine that common ground whilst poisoning public opinion against America – amongst blacks and whites alike. That is a shame as South Africa is strategically important and resource rich, with vast potential opportunities for American investors. Instead, the US should direct its pressure on reforming policies such as BEE and expropriation where it will have the support of the great majority of South Africans and serve the best interests of that country’s economy.
Richard Tren is a director of the Yorktown Foundation for Freedom
