Trump Claims Undermined As White South Africans Return Home

While Trump has claimed that white South Africans face persecution in their home country, some have actually deemed it a safer option than the United States.

Initially, many white South Africans immigrated to the United States out of safety and persecution fears in the African nation. However, the “white flight” back to South Africa comes from the ongoing news of U.S. citizens’ killings, often at the hands of law enforcement, ICE agents, or random shooters with any motive to cause harm.

Some white South Africans have found the violence too much to handle, repatriating to South Africa for a better sense of safety.

“People are being shot in broad daylight. American citizens are being shot and killed,” shared Andrew Veitch, who moved to California in 2003, to Reuters. “I don’t want to live in a place like this.”

Many white South Africans who migrated out of the country received a warm welcome by U.S. President Trump. Trump had claimed that the group faced discrimination by their majority-Black government, an assertion denounced by the South African capital city of Pretoria.

However, the end of apartheid also resulted in the end of white-minority rule, allowing for more agency and political positions for native Black South Africans. Under claims of job search difficulty and high crime, white South Africans sought livelihoods elsewhere.

Now, those who ventured to the U.S. have opted to reclaim their citizenship and head back to the southern hemisphere. A new “Return to South Africa” movement has also sparked across the United States and Europe, despite Trump’s own refugee program for Afrikaners. Around 3,500 white South Africans have come to the U.S. through this program, although global sentiment toward life in South Africa has shifted.

“My heart is just full of gratefulness to be here,” shared Naomi Saphire, who returned to South Africa after raising her young family in North Carolina. “The U.S. has been really good to me (but) I just felt like I was depriving my kids of this life.”

Several claims that white people remain disenfranchised in South Africa lack statistical backing. The unemployment rate for Black people grossly overshadows the rates for whites, listed at 35% and 8%, respectively, from data obtained by Stats SA and shared on the news outlet.

Other statistics, such as farm murders, also negatively impact Black South Africans more. This, alongside the growing repatriation movement, further undermines Trump’s refugee program.

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