South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has criticised a group of 59 white minority Afrikaners who have resettled in the US under a controversial refugee scheme, labelling them “cowards”.
The white South Africans arrived in the US on Monday after being granted refugee status by the Trump administration, which says they face racial discrimination at home.
South Africa’s government has strongly disputed Washington’s claims that Afrikaners are being persecuted.
Ramaphosa said the group of Afrikaners were relocating to the US because they were not in favour of efforts aimed at addressing the country’s challenges and apartheid past.
“As South Africans, we are resilient,” Ramaphosa said at an agricultural event in the Free State province.
“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.”
“I can bet you that they will be back soon because there is no country like South Africa,” he added.
The Trump administration has upended US refugee admissions policy, meaning that virtually all people fleeing famine and war no longer have a chance of resettlement there.
Yet it has made an exception for Afrikaners — a white ethnic minority that created and maintained South Africa’s brutal apartheid system from the late 1940s until the early 1990s. The move has been widely criticised by rights groups and refugee advocates, who say that the Afrikaners are neither victims of discrimination nor vulnerable.
