South Africa is a terrible place for white people to hear President Trump and his closest supporters tell this. They face discrimination, are far from their jobs, live under constant threats of violence, or have been stolen by a corrupt black-led government that has put the country in chaos.
The data tells a different story. Although whites make up 7% of the country’s population, they own at least half of South African land. Police statistics do not indicate that they are more susceptible to violent crime than others. On almost every mark of the size of the economy, white South Africans are much better than blacks.
However, Mr. Trump and his allies have pushed their narrative of South Africa to argue at home: If the United States does not restrict attempts to promote diversity, the United States will become a hotbed of dysfunction and anti-white discrimination.
“This has caused fear of white people in the United States and elsewhere: ‘We are white people at threat’,” Max du Preez, a white South African writer and historian, said of Mr. Trump’s description of his country.
However, Mr. Du Preez added that whites have flourished since the end of apartheid in 1994.
The similarities between South Africa’s attempt to undo apartheid injustice and the long struggles in the United States to address slavery, Jim Crow laws and other forms of racial discrimination have become a common avoidance among some Trump supporters.
Ernst Roets, a white activist and writer in South Africa, said when he talks to like-minded conservatives in the United States, they often tell him, “Oh yes, we need to look at South Africa because if we are not careful, that’s what we have for us.”
After apartheid declined thirty years ago, South Africa’s democratic government went out of its way to revoke inequality in the system, which led to the majority of black people in the country sending dispatchers. However, President Nelson Mandela largely allowed the white South Africans to maintain wealth in order to maintain peace and transition to democracy.
His party is the African National Congress and has passed laws trying to close the gap between blacks. Recently, South Africa has enacted an item that allows the government to occupy private land in the public interest, sometimes without compensation.
The law has not been used, but some South Africans – Mr. Trump – say it is unfairly targeting landowners and commercial farmers in the country, who are still white despite decades of anti-apartheid policies.
Mr. Trump has established his political identity, partly as a protector of white Americans. He strives to preserve the symbol of the Southern League, training in racial sensitivity to “non-American propaganda” and openly defending white supremacists.
While advocating for Africans (White minorities in South Africa led the segregation government), cutting aid to much of Africa seems to be the latest illustration of Mr. Trump’s commitment to white interests.
Last month, the president signed an executive order to grant refugee status to the Dutch and suspend all aid to South Africa, in part in response to its land reform laws. He said on social media last week that the U.S. would provide rapid citizenship for South African farmers, many of whom are Africa Dutch. Then on Friday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio called South Africa’s ambassador to the United States Ebrahim Rasool a “racially tempted politician who hates America” and expelled him.
“Trump signals white people everywhere that he will use his power to protect and advance their interests regardless of the facts,” said Khalil Gibran Muhammad, a professor of African American Studies at Princeton University.
Some Afrikaans welcomed Mr. Trump’s hug. The activists traveled to Washington last month to lobby for more support from his administration. A White House official described the Afrikaan delegation as a “civil rights leader.”
Many of Mr. Trump’s allies have long been concerned about the dissatisfaction of the Africa. Born in South Africa but without Afrikaans, Elon Musk accused the government of promoting racist laws and falsely claimed that white farmers in South Africa were killing every day.
After Mr Roets appeared on Tucker Carlson’s Fox News in 2018, Mr Carlson posted on social media that “white farmers were brutally murdered for their land in South Africa.”
Mr. Carlson later operated a section describing seizures and homicides on the land. Mr. Trump was his first term at the time and then tagged Mr. Carlson in social media posts, saying he was ordering “and mass killings of farmers” on farms in South Africa, although so far the government has not seized any farms.
In Mr. Trump’s track, these themes are now looped as warning signs of the United States.
Mr Roets said in an interview that he was close to U.S. far-right influencer Jack Posobiec, who recently accompanied Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth to a trip to Europe.
In an earlier conversation with influential Trump ally Charlie Kirk, Mr. Posobiec said South Africa is in trouble with its laws aimed at creating racial equality. He added that the U.S. has hired the same path through “based on race, gender and sexual orientation.”
Many South African voters, regardless of their race, agree that the African Congress has caused a persistent poverty of blacks suffering from corruption, poverty infrastructure, high crime and inequality. In the last election, the party lost all seats in parliament for the first time since the end of apartheid.
Analysts pointed out that the party has done its best to adopt a market-oriented policy that enables white South Africans to maintain their economic capabilities. In fact, many South Africans criticized Mr. Mandela for not requiring a more aggressive redistribution of black black land in South Africa, who were forced to shut out during segregation and colonial times.
Supporters of the new land law hope it will accelerate the long-term goal of providing more land to black blacks in South Africa.
But for Mr. Trump, as he stated in the executive order he signed last month, it is the Afrikaans who are “victims of unjust racial discrimination.”
The landing of the Africa Dutch came mainly from the Dutch colonists who arrived in southern Africa in 1652, becoming international dear in the early 1900s, a small tribe, a powerful British Empire standing on territory (although they eventually lost the war). The British who ruled later looked down on the Afrikaans, which was ruthless, and these battles sowed a painful division between the two largest white populations in South Africa so far.
While the president usually tries to ban refugees or asylum seekers from entering the United States, he has provided a special way to enter the country for some white Africans.
This does not have to be linked to the wishes of the target audience. Many Afrikaners say that while they appreciate Mr. Trump’s support for their persecution, they would rather stay in South Africa, which they think is what they deserve to go home.
Afrikaner online influencer Willem Petzer’s social media post has been shared by Trump supporters who said he is considering Mr. Trump’s proposal. But he said he hopes South Africa’s government will end what he calls racism for those who look like him.
“When I became a conscious person, apartheid had disappeared,” said Pezer, 28. “All I know is discrimination against white people.”
Mr. Du Preez, a South African writer and historian, said this rebrand of Afrikaner as victims resonated greatly between the far right in the United States.
“They are playing things that threaten white Christian civilization,” he said. “It has a lot of appeal between evangelicals and the rest of the United States.”
Zolan Kanno-Youngs contributed reports to Washington.
