The group, which included political analysts, economists, attorneys, journalists, religious leaders, and historians, rejected the idea that they were the victims of racial persecution and even genocide in an open letter, calling it "not only misleading, but dangerous."
The president said that the United States would be boycotting the forthcoming G20 conference of world leaders, which is being hosted in South Africa, following Trump's repeated and refuted assertions that white South Africans are being massacred and their lands are being seized.
The U.S. president wrote on his social media site:
“Afrikaners (People who are descended from Dutch settlers, and also French and German immigrants) are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated. No U.S. Government Official will attend as long as these Human Rights abuses continue.”
The Trump administration also permitted a limited number of Afrikaners to enter the United States earlier this year, despite their home country's denial that they were refugees at all, in contrast to its broad and forceful anti-immigration policy.
“As South Africans and Afrikaners, we write this response with concern and conviction,” the Afrikaners’ letter read. “The Trump administration’s plan to prioritize white South Africans for refugee status, while drastically cutting overall refugee admissions, have brought our identity into the spotlight in ways that are deeply troubling.
We reject the narrative that casts Afrikaners as victims of racial persecution in post-apartheid South Africa. This framing, now being used to support the far-right ‘Great Replacement’ theory in the United States, is not only misleading, but also dangerous.
It distorts the realities of South Africa, weaponizes our history, and reduces a complex social context and necessary leveling of playing fields into a simplistic symbol of white decline.”
Organizations headed by Afrikaners tasked with monitoring such attacks have already refuted claims that violence against white farmers in South Africa is pervasive. Despite making up only 7% of the population, white farmers possess over 70% of the nation's commercial acreage.
Still, the Afrikaner political association AfriForum claims that smaller than 150 attacks involving granges took place in 2023.
Officers stated in their letter that they were particularly upset about borderline groups in South Africa and away" kidnapping " their ethnic identity through enterprises like" Make Afrikaners Great Again."
Echoing extensively circulated inaccurate information, Trump has promoted a critical and false narrative about South Africa's political situation throughout his alternate term in office.
The chairman ambushed his South African counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa during a tense meeting at the Oval Office in May. He brazenned him with unsupported statistics and brandished a document that sounded to contain information and prints from the Democratic Republic of the Congo, which is about 1,000 long hauls down from South Africa.
Additionally, the president displayed a video clip of white crosses line a South African road, which he misrepresented as proof of "ongoing genocide" and "burial sites" for white farmers.
Elon Musk, Trump's former head of DOGE and a native of South Africa, has been at odds with his home country over the launch of his Starlink satellite system there. At one point, he claimed he was "not allowed to operate in South Africa."
What reasons did the White South Africans give for rebuking Trump?
They rejected being used as pawns in America's culture wars, emphasizing they do n't want to be politicized abroad for divisive narratives. They refocused out that Trump's claims of white South Africans being" massacred" or passing genocide are inflated and untrue, lacking factual base.
They stressed the complex reality in South Africa, where crime affects numerous people anyhow of race, and land reform laws are part of correcting literal shafts, not racially motivated persecution. They stressed that the South African government has denied any racially targeted land confiscations, and that Trump's assertions ignore the country's painful history of intolerance and efforts to address inequality.
The reproach reflects a desire among numerous white South Africans to clarify their situation and avoid being entangled in foreign political dockets that distort their lived experience.