Fact Check: Are White South African ‘refugees’ fleeing racial persecution?

May 21, 2025

Cape town South Africa Photo: Tobias Reich

Afrikaners, a White minority who ruled South Africa with an oppressive grip, dispossessed the Black majority during the colonial era and apartheid.

This article was originally published by The Emancipator.

President Donald Trump is preparing to meet with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa on Wednesday, roughly a week after the first group of White South Africans arrived in the U.S. under a fast-tracked refugee status.

This has allowed them to flee what Trump in an executive order called “government-sponsored race-based discrimination.”

They skipped ahead of refugees from other countries — many of whom have fled ethnic and religious persecution — and who traditionally wait months for asylum.

The Trump administration’s narrative is far from the truth and has been aggressively pushed by Elon Musk, a tech billionaire-turned-presidential adviser and native of South Africa.

Afrikaners, a White minority who ruled South Africa with an oppressive grip, dispossessed the Black majority during the colonial era and apartheid, siphoning land and resources.

Trump and his administration are defending resettling the descendants of colonizers while blocking refugees of color from such countries as Sudan, Afghanistan, the Republic of Congo, and Myanmar.

From misleading falsehoods about Black South Africans taking the Afrikaners’ farmland to outright lies about White farmers being “brutally killed” for their land, The Emancipator fact-checked some of the claims the administration is using to justify a hypocritical approach to refugees.

The Claim: The Trump administration has denied racial preference in granting White South Africans refugee status.

The Reality: According to the State Department, a person is considered a refugee if they have “experienced past persecution or has a well-founded fear of persecution on account of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group, or political opinion.”

In 2023, the U.S. Refugee Admissions Program admitted over 64,000 refugees into the U.S., with more than two-thirds coming from Syria, Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, and Burma, according to the State Department.

Trump suspended the program in January.

The State Department says, “The President may specify circumstances under which individuals who are within their countries of nationality (or, if no nationality, within their country of last habitual residence) may be considered a refugee for purposes of admission to the United States.”

Trump is allowing “Afrikaner refugees” to jump the line while suspending a refugee program that disproportionately allowed access for applicants from countries with a majority of citizens of color.

The Claim: President Trump is claiming that White South African farmers are being brutally killed for their land.

“It’s a terrible thing that’s taking place. And farmers are being killed. They happen to be white, but whether they’re white or Black makes no difference to me, but white farmers are being brutally killed, and their land is being confiscated in South Africa,” Trump said.

The Reality: That country’s government has repeatedly denied the claim. A recent analysis by the New York Times found that out of the 225 people killed on South African farms between 2020 and 2024, 101 were Black workers and 53 were likely White farmers.

The Claim: The Trump administration claims the Expropriation Act of 2024, signed into law earlier this year, allows the South African government to “seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation.”

The Reality: Signed into law earlier this year by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, the act repeals an apartheid-era expropriation act. The new law allows for land seizures by the government without compensation under certain circumstances.

Here’s why: Under colonization, and later, under apartheid, large swaths of Black-owned land was inequitably redistributed to the White Afrikaner class.

According to South Africa’s 2017 Land Audit Report, Whites own 72% of farmland and agricultural land. Black South Africans, only held 4% of farmland and agricultural land. According to South Africa’s 2022 census, Whites make up 7.3% of the nation’s population, while Blacks account for 81.4%.

The South African government’s attempts to right-size land ownership include only expropriating land for public purpose, and trying to first reach an agreement with the landowner, and in some cases, offering no compensation. It is unclear how much, if any, land has been expropriated.

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Chandelis Duster, Emancipator

Chandelis Duster is a Reporter for CNN’s Race & Equality team. She joined CNN in August 2019 as a breaking news reporter on CNN Politics, where she covered a broad range of beats including the Supreme Court, elections across America, and the US Department of Agriculture. She’s revealed dozen of stories about the agency, including debt relief efforts for struggling farmers and lawsuits over loan forgiveness efforts for farmers of color Prior to joining CNN, Duster was a reporter at NBC News covering politics, pop culture, red carpet events, race, and breaking news. During her tenure at NBC, Duster worked with NBC Nightly News with Lester Holt, The Today Show, Morning Joe, and numerous other shows. Additionally, she also wrote stories for and managed NBCBLK, a section of NBCNews.com that focuses on the black community.