DIRCO rejects US claims behind Afrikaner refugee scheme
Pretoria has accused Washington of spreading false narratives after the US approved a refugee programme giving preference to South African Afrikaners, calling the move 'fundamentally flawed'.
Image: Saul Loeb / AFP
The South African government has taken aim at the US over its newly announced Special Refugee Programme, describing it as “based on false claims” and an attempt to “undermine South Africa’s constitutional processes.”
This comes after a Presidential Determination issued on September 30 and published in the Federal Register, in which former US president Donald Trump capped refugee admissions for the 2026 fiscal year at 7 500 - the lowest in the country’s history - and instructed that most of those places be reserved for Afrikaners from South Africa.
“The admissions numbers shall primarily be allocated among Afrikaners from South Africa and other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination in their respective homelands,” the document reads.
In a statement issued on Thursday, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) said the programme “continues to raise concern” as it appears “to be based on false assumptions and shows disregard for South Africa’s constitutional processes.”
The department further stated that the claim of a so-called “white genocide” in South Africa was widely discredited and unsupported by reliable evidence.
DIRCO also noted that prominent members of the Afrikaner community themselves had rejected the narrative, describing their open letter as “courageous and patriotic.”
“Therefore, a programme designed to facilitate their immigration and resettlement as refugees is fundamentally flawed,” the department said.