White South Africans Granted Refugee Status In U.S. Are Cowards, Says President Ramaphosa

President Cyril Ramaphosa has labelled a group of 59 white South Africans who have moved to the US to resettle as “cowards.”

The group of Afrikaners arrived in the US on Monday after President Donald Trump granted them refugee status, saying they faced racial discrimination.

According to BBC, he noted that “they’ll be back soon,” arguing that they do not fit the bill for refugees.

Ramaphosa shared his thoughts on Monday at an agricultural exhibition in the Free State province.

According to him, the Afrikaners were moving to the US because they were not “favourably disposed” to efforts aimed at addressing the country’s challenges.

“If you look at all national groups in our country, black and white, they’ve stayed in this country because it’s our country and we must not run away from our problems. We must stay here and solve our problems,” Ramaphosa said.

“I can bet you that they will be back soon because there is no country like South Africa,” he added.

But Ramaphosa said those who wanted to leave were not happy with efforts to address the inequities of the apartheid past, terming their relocation a “sad moment for them.”

“As South Africans, we are resilient. We don’t run away from our problems. We must stay here and solve our problems. When you run away you are a coward, and that’s a real cowardly act,” he added.

The US has also accused the South African government of seizing land from white farmers without paying compensation.

More than 30 years after the end of decades of rule by South Africa’s white minority, black farmers own only a small fraction of the country’s best farmland, with the majority still in white hands, leading to anger over the slow pace of change.

In January, President Ramaphosa signed a controversial law allowing the government to seize privately owned land without compensation in certain circumstances, when it is deemed “equitable and in the public interest.”

But the government says no land has yet been seized under the act.

Ramaphosa argued that he had told Donald Trump during a phone conversation that the claim of racial discrimination was untrue.

“We’re the only country on the continent where the colonisers came to stay, and we have never driven them out of our country,” he added, dismissing claims that Afrikaners were being persecuted.

The U.S. refugee status granted to these individuals stems from Trump’s controversial 2018 directive prioritising asylum for white South Africans, particularly Afrikaners — descendants of early Dutch settlers — whom he described as victims of “unjust racial discrimination.”

Despite the end of apartheid in 1994, white South Africans continue to hold significant economic power.

According to the Review of Political Economy, they still control around 75% of private land and possess roughly 20 times more wealth than the Black majority.

Unemployment rates remain lowest among whites.

Meanwhile, claims of white persecution have gained traction online and among far-right circles, particularly in the U.S. Figures like Elon Musk, a white South African-born tech mogul, have echoed these sentiments, further fueling the controversy.

However, this move marks a controversial shift in U.S. refugee policy that prioritises a white minority group while broader global refugee admissions remain largely frozen.

The New York Times earlier reported that, according to internal memos and officials familiar with the plans, the administration had fast-tracked asylum for the Afrikaners.

This move came despite President Donald Trump’s near-total suspension of the U.S. refugee resettlement programme shortly after taking office in January.

While thousands of refugees from war-torn countries like the Democratic Republic of Congo and Myanmar continue to face years-long waits in camps, the Afrikaner group was processed at unprecedented speed.

Just weeks after announcing refugee eligibility for Afrikaners, the U.S. deployed teams to Pretoria to screen white South Africans.

According to documents from The Times, more than 8,000 applications were reviewed, and about 100 Afrikaners were identified as potential refugees. Trump officials were directed to focus particularly on white Afrikaner farmers.(SaharaReporters)