White South Africans make up around 7% of the country’s population. But they still own some 78% of private farmland in South Africa and have about 20 times the wealth of Black South Africans.
One of the executive orders signed by Donald Trump since becoming president allows Afrikaners to resettle in the USImage: JIM WATSON/POOL/AFP/Getty Images
The first white South Africans granted refugee status under a program initiated by US President Donald Trump departed from Johannesburg on Sunday.
A reporter for news agency Reuters described seeing a queue of white citizens with airport trolleys full of luggage waiting to have their passports stamped before they entered the departure lounge.
The US-funded charter plane held 49 passengers, according to a South African Transport Ministry spokesperson Collen Msibi.
“The application for the permit [to land] said it’s the Afrikaners who are relocating to the USA as refugees,” Msibi said.
Afrikaners are a white ethnic minority, largely descended from Dutch, German and French settlers. Afrikaner leaders ruled South Africa during the brutal apartheid regime of racial segregation that often saw the violent repression of Black South Africans.
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