South African white genocide does not exist, new ambassador to US tells BBC

South African white genocide does not exist, new ambassador to US tells BBC

South Africa’s new ambassador to Washington has a personal reason for rejecting Donald Trump’s claim that there is a genocide against white Afrikaners: he is “a born Afrikaner” himself.

“Is he talking about us?”, Roelf Meyer recalls thinking when he first heard President Trump say it.

His answer to the US president’s allegation is unequivocal.

The idea of a mass assault on South Africa’s white Afrikaner minority does not exist, he told the BBC, saying his own identity gave him the authority to say so.

Meyer was one of the main mediators who helped bring an end to white-minority rule, known as apartheid, in South Africa in the 1990s. He was named ambassador to the US in April, after diplomatic ties between the US and South Africa deteriorated sharply.

In an interview with the BBC, Meyer said the facts about violence in South Africa had been distorted and that he never received a clear explanation for where this “misdirection of information” was coming from.

Last year, Trump accused South Africa of white genocide during a meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House and introduced a US refugee route for Afrikaners.

Since then, nearly 13,000 refugees have been admitted to the United States, and all but three were South African.

One of them was Lielie, the name she uses publicly, who relocated with her family to Texas from South Africa, where they had lived on her stepfather’s farm growing macadamia nuts and bananas.

Even with walls around the house, an electric fence and eight bull terriers, she said she lived in “fear the whole time” and that on three occasions she saw people entering her property.

“Nothing was stolen, we weren’t harmed, but there are friends of my husband, people that lived around us, they were brutally attacked,” she said.

She said that since moving to the US through the Trump administration’s refugee route, her life had changed, she felt safer going out, and “my kids can actually play outside”.

President Trump confronted South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa over widely discredited claims that genocide was being committed against white people

According to a notice sent to Congress on Tuesday, the Trump administration is preparing to admit up to 17,500 more white Afrikaners as refugees over the next 12 months.

In a statement to the BBC, a White House spokeswoman said: “President Trump has provided a lifeline for Afrikaners, who are being raped, maimed, killed and driven off their property across South Africa.

“While the South African government and many in the media have brushed off the horrific lived experiences of this community, the Trump administration continues to process applications for refugee status because the president has a humanitarian heart.”

SJ Du Venage, who lives on South Africa’s west coast, has been trying to move to the US under the new programme.

Du Venage is a council member of the Freedom Front Plus, a right-wing Afrikaner party, and says there is a “political drive towards killing white people, and killing the farmers on the farms”.

“There’s absolutely an agenda to wipe us out here,” he says.

SJ Du Venage, who lives on South Africa’s west coast, alleges there’s a “political drive towards killing white people”

An Afrikaner lobby group is staging a vigil on Saturday with thousands of white crosses on Washington’s National Mall to remember what it says are victims of “farm attacks”.

“I’m an Afrikaner from South Africa myself,” Ambassador Meyer said, “and I can say that I’ve never experienced something of that kind.”

Meyer said he would like to speak with Trump about the reality of the situation, saying that as a “born Afrikaner”, he has the “legitimacy” to discuss the issue.

He said the “trust” between the two men was one reason President Ramaphosa appointed him to help repair US-South Africa relations, along with “the fact he also saw the value of me being an Afrikaner”.

“But I’m not here to represent the Afrikaner only,” Meyer says.

Last week, the Trump administration announced visa restrictions for South Africans it said were responsible for “race-based discrimination” against white people. It also warned of further punitive measures if South African leaders failed to address the issue.

Police data shows that most victims of crime in South Africa, including on farms, are black. Farm violence, often linked to robberies, is a problem, but it accounts for a smaller share of homicides in the country.

While no politician disputes that crime is a problem in South Africa, many experts say this does not amount to “persecution”.

Larry Bartlett, the former director of the US Refugee Assistance Programme, said it could even be “unlawful” to divert a programme defined in law for people who “really have no chance to go home”.

He said white people who were unlikely to qualify as refugees under the law were taking scarce places intended for those fleeing war or ethnic cleansing.

“Why single out the white Afrikaner to say this group qualifies to flee to the US? This country suffers gender-based violence. Why not single out women?” Rudi Swanepoel, a pastor from Johannesburg, told the BBC.

Swanepoel believes it is not persecution but a “loss of privilege” that is making some Afrikaners feel aggrieved.

“To use the metaphor of a cake, 30, 40 years ago the white people of South Africa controlled the cake,” he says. “Since democracy came, the obvious reality was we had to now start sharing that cake and those privileges.”

Meyer wants Trump’s executive order against South Africa, which underpins the refugee route, to be revoked.

He said South Africa had never stopped people from leaving and had addressed all the US concerns, stressing that the land expropriation law is awaiting a court ruling.

“South Africa has challenges with the prevention of crime and with the combatting of crime,” he said.

But he added: “It’s a problem all around. It’s not rural. It’s not farm attacks only. If you look at the total picture, the huge levels of crime in the black townships of South Africa are the biggest concern, proportionally, far more than anything else.”

He said he would urge the US to help South Africa with resources to fight crime, including equipment to improve response times.

“It doesn’t help us to raise a voice outside, if we are not committed to doing something inside the country,” he says.