A group of white descendants of Dutch settlers to South Africa landed at Washington Dulles International Airport last week, part of a new Trump administration program aimed at “Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.” The group, Trump officials claimed, were fleeing “white genocide.”

On social media, South Africans turned the departure into a joke, dubbing it the Great Tsek, in a double entendre referencing both the Great Trek — the historic migration of Dutch settlers from the Cape Colony into the interior of the country in the mid-1800s — and the word tsek, an Afrikaans colloquialism that crudely translates to “fuck off.” 

The departure was the latest development in a saga that has shocked, worried, and amused South Africans, in equal measure.

The events that led to that flight, and indeed to the executive order that enabled the flight, began during President Donald Trump’s first term, in May 2018. Kallie Kriel, the CEO of an Afrikaner rights movement called AfriForum, and his deputy Ernst Roets, traveled to America to make the case to U.S. officials and diplomats that South Africa’s Afrikaner farmers were being racially targeted and would be harmed by a proposed law that would expropriate land from owners who had not used it.

In Washington, D.C., the men met with then-national security adviser John Bolton and staffers in Sen. Ted Cruz’s office. Roets also secured an interview on Fox News. Tucker Carlson interviewed him about his book, “Kill the Boer,” which the duo were using as a calling card on their trip. In it, Roets argues that since the end of apartheid, South African authorities have done little to protect white victims of farm murders. 

Carlson caught Trump’s attention a few months later, when he ran a follow-up segment on “white farm murders” in which the anchor insisted that the government of South Africa was “taking land from white people on the basis of their skin color.”

In response, Trump tweeted, “I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers.”

Kriel’s lobbying trip had been hugely successful — but while he was interested in making global links, the Afrikaner’s main focus was domestic South African politics. He knew the attention the visit had garnered would irritate the African National Congress government, which has been eager to safeguard its international reputation for peace, stability, and racial harmony, since it was first elected into power in 1994. 

America was just a handy backdrop: For AfriForum, the real prize was increasing its reach and influence back home in South Africa, where Afrikaners have played a significant role in national affairs since the arrival of the first Dutchman at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652.

During the apartheid era, Afrikaners largely saw themselves as a self-sufficient white tribe of Africa. Their leaders were insular and distrusted global political institutions. After all, the Afrikaner nationalist rulers were reviled by the international community, which sanctioned their government and declared apartheid a crime against humanity.

When apartheid was defeated by a negotiated settlement between the Afrikaner government and Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress party following years of international and domestic pressure, Afrikaners were promised that they could keep their land, assets, and businesses, if they pledged to integrate into the wider society and respect a new Constitution that their leaders had helped to draft.

At the level of political representation, the National Party, which had implemented apartheid and ruled the nation since 1948, collapsed after the first democratic elections. It folded into the Democratic Alliance a few years later, which, broadly speaking, represented white South Africans of both British and Afrikaner heritage. Many white people of course voted for the ANC and other political parties, but voting patterns show a clear preference amongst white people for the DA. 

The Afrikaner community’s economic muscle has remained largely in place as its political strength has waned, but a cohort of organizations have emerged to present the acceptable face of white nationalist ideology: white victimhood. 

The largely white trade union Solidarity and its policy arm AfriForum have been able to assert this victimhood in response to the emergence of the Economic Freedom Fighters, a political party led by firebrand Julius Malema, who is popular with the country’s youth. 

The EFF and AfriForum were engaged in a long-running court battle over the EFF’s use of the Xhosa-language song “Dubul’ ibhunu,” which loosely translates as “kill the Boer.” The song was popular in the 1970s and ’80s as a chant by freedom fighters seeking to overthrow white minority rule. In court, AfriForum argued the song made Afrikaners feel unsafe. South Africa’s Constitutional Court ruled that given its history, those singing “Dubul’ ibhunu” were protected “under the rubric of freedom of speech.” 

For the last decade, as the court case wore on and AfriForum found its voice in America, Kriel became a familiar face in the South African media landscape. 

Unlike the dour Afrikaner leaders of the past who shied away from speaking English, Kriel is affable, comfortable speaking English, and a constant media presence who can debate smoothly. But his beliefs are still linked to his predecessors. He is on the record as stating that when Dutch settlers moved into the interior of the country in the 19th century, there were no inhabitants. Likewise, Roets comes across as an even-tempered policy wonk, a demeanor he put to use this week when he appeared on “The Charlie Kirk Show.”

After their flash of success catching the eye of the first Trump administration, AfriForum shifted their focus back to domestic politics after the unsympathetic Joe Biden came into the White House, building a litigation unit to fight for Afrikaner rights and campaigning against the slow-moving land bill. 

Then Trump returned. Within weeks, he issued his executive order, “Addressing Egregious Actions of The Republic of South Africa.” South Africans, including those in AfriForum and Solidarity who had fed Trump the white genocide conspiracy in the first place, were plainly shocked.

At first, the nation was furious with the Afrikaner organizations. The executive order was strongly worded and threatened sanctions. South Africans across all race groups criticized Kriel and Roets for convincing a foreign government to collectively punish the entire country over falsehoods. They were accused of peddling lies and disinformation and called traitors, as the nation worried that the U.S. would impose sanctions. Even AgriSA, a group that specifically represents the interests of farmers and has historically been dominated by Afrikaners, said “claims linking farm murders to the signing of the [Land Expropriation] act are baseless and irresponsible.” 

As the anger mounted, AfriForum and Solidarity held a press conference in which they tried to distance themselves from Trump’s order. With his tail between his legs, Kriel backtracked on his claims of a white genocide. He has gone on to turn down Trump’s offer of asylum, insisting he was a patriotic South African who wanted to reaffirm “our commitment, our recommitment, to the country and all its people.”

In the months that have followed, South African’s anger at both Trump and the Afrikaner interest groups seems to have abated. Following the tariff debacle, and Trump’s attacks on American universities, his own public servants, foreign aid, and domestic affirmative-action programs, South Africans have concluded that the U.S. president’s views on South Africa can’t be taken too personally.

Rather than rage against Trump, South Africans have opted to laugh. Trump’s February comment that “terrible things are happening in South Africa” has become the basis of parody skits made by young South Africans — including Afrikaners — who have no interest in aligning themselves with nationalism. 

They have shared video clips, captioned “terrible things are happening,” of white South Africans dancing and carousing with their Black compatriots, and made skits in which white South Africans speak, direct-to-camera, ironically about their terrible lives, as they record themselves in beautiful homes and are served drinks by Black staff.

The humor points to the fact that racial hierarchies are in place in the country, just not in the ways Trump and his refugees are prepared to admit. Trump’s proximity to wealthy white South Africans — from tech magnates like Elon Musk, his AI czar David Sacks, and Peter Thiel, who lived in apartheid South Africa and Namibia as a child, to the golfer Gary Player, with whom he is purportedly close — is notable. 

Yet the Afrikaners who landed in D.C. last week have little in common with Trump and his friends. 

For one thing, there is no doubt that many of them are struggling financially. To be sure, they are not impoverished or persecuted, and therefore do not warrant the label refugee. 

But in the context of a raging U.S. debate about diversity, equity, and inclusion, it is worth pointing out that the new arrivals represent the bottom rung of the Afrikaner socioeconomic ladder: those who have not been able to transition smoothly into post-apartheid South Africa without the protections that white skin privilege would have afforded them a generation ago.

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In the absence of formal white supremacy at home, they have opted to take up an offer to be the first beneficiaries of America’s new international affirmative action scheme for white people. They are in America because, despite the head start of inherited privilege, being white is no longer the sole guarantee of a good life in South Africa. 

That they should experience their loss of privilege as so catastrophic that they are prepared to label it genocide is absurd, sad, and, to some amongst the political class certainly, infuriating. 

As a popular columnist in South Africa has noted, “The white utopia that they believe will greet them is in fact a country at odds with itself as it deals with its own racial tensions and inequality. And one in which they will have neither special protection nor special voice.”

Even President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has a reputation for graciousness and diplomacy, lost his cool, chastising the departed Afrikaners by saying, “As South Africans, we are resilient. We don’t run away from our problems. … When you run away, you are a coward.”

For others, however, the real issue at the heart of the conflict between America and South Africa has nothing to do with the Afrikaners. As EFF founder Malema noted this past week, “Those people know that there’s no white person being killed in South Africa, but they use it to make us change our policies.”

In other words, the claims of white genocide are a pretext for an administration that is keen to pressure South Africa to withdraw its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice — a matter that is specifically named as a point of contention in the executive order. 

In true Trump style, the white genocide claims also provide leverage for advancing Musk’s attempt to secure a deal for his satellite internet company Starlink with the South African government. Regulators in South Africa have refused to greenlight the company’s launch until it can bring onboard Black shareholders, as part of a long-standing commitment to affirmative actions laws designed to address the painful economic legacy of apartheid.

Since last year’s bruising election campaign that forced the ANC to form a minority government, the nation has struggled to come together. Trump’s executive order has galvanized the country. Whether through laughter, anger, or tears, South Africans have been united in their refusal to be strong-armed by an administration that — by weaponizing our painful past — has lost the moral authority it once had. 

In pillorying Trump’s commitment to the crude racism South Africa walked away from three decades ago, the Afrikaners in America have become a symbol of the country South Africa no longer wants to be. 

The post How Trump’s Embrace of Afrikaner “Refugees” Became a Joke in South Africa appeared first on The Intercept.