Amid the circus of the 49 Afrikaner South Africans who arrived State-side last week, #SliceofGasant columnist is appealing to compatriots to take a healthy dose of perspective that there are far more Afrikaners who are choosing to stay. Let’s rally around them.
A lot has been said about the South African 49ers who arrived in the United States sak-en-pak last week and were welcomed with open arms. All the criticism by those of us witnessing what can only be described as extreme gaslighting has been spot on.
We’re told that more will make the transatlantic flight to settle in the US but it’s important to keep perspective: they’re really a minority within a minority.
Let’s start at the start and the United Nations’ definition of a refugee. It reads: ‘A refugee is someone who has been forced to flee his or her country because of persecution, war or violence. A refugee has a well-founded fear of persecution for reasons of race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership in a particular social group.’
It continues: ‘Most likely, they cannot return home or are afraid to do so. War and ethnic, tribal and religious violence are leading causes of refugees fleeing their countries’.
Ostensibly, those who are fleeing South Africa claim they are the victims of white genocide. This is simply not true and no one forced them to flee. There is no genocide.
But in many, or almost all cases of the 49ers, the privilege reeks. As media personality Dan Corder pointed out on his eNCA show last week, a Mr Kleinhans told the BBC he left his homeland after receiving death threats in WhatsApp messages.
He said: ‘I had to leave a five-bedroom house, which I will lose now,’ adding that he also left behind his car, his dogs and even his mother.
Mr Kleinhans, many South Africans dream of living in a 5-bedroom house or owning a car in South Africa. The majority live in poverty and squalor – and those are the ones who have jobs. They are victims of crime because of their circumstances created by a system that ended – on paper – in 1994. There is no political agenda to ethnically cleanse Afrikanerdom.
What the US has done is to make a mockery of refugees all over the world; asylum seekers who fled their native lands in Syria, Sudan, Palestine or Rwanda and who face real persecution or death and not for some kind of fairytale.
But a more important consideration I’ve been grappling with is my concern for the Afrikaners who are staying behind, not taking up Donald Trump’s offer of becoming refugees in the US, and who are committed to helping make this country work.
If 2 000 Afrikaners take up asylum in the US, it is a drop in the ocean compared to the ones who are staying. They are not the enemy and – dare I say – neither are those who took up the offer of asylum. It is their decision that they are allowed to take in a democracy that allows citizens to make their own destinies, no matter how misguided. When black South African activists fled a system that hunted them down in a shoot-to-kill reality, they were the real refugees who the apartheid government banned and labelled as terrorists.
What needs to happen is for us to pay attention to the Afrikaners who stayed behind and may perhaps not understand the land expropriation act, which ostensibly is the reason the 49ers left. Can we make it our business to help them understand? To be honest, I’ve had to read up on it myself and I urge all South Africans to do the same. Bottom line: no one is going to forcibly remove you from your land, à la District Six or Sophiatown.
I’ve fantasised – and I believe many others have – about leaving for abroad to find a better opportunity for me and my family. I have applied for jobs. But never once did it occur to me that I would give up my South African citizenship. It takes a week on holiday out of this beloved country to realise there’s no place like home.
I want to be here to see my children participate in the miracle that was created in 1994 – even though it’s hard, stretching each rand to the next paycheque. I want to see the Springboks play at the DHL Stadium in Cape Town. I want to have a real South African braai when I want to. I want to celebrate in the streets when Bafana go to the World Cup.
There are people who died for my freedoms – ironically, at the hands of the ancestors of the 49ers. But hey, I ain’t mad at ya, even though you bought the lie Trump, Elon Musk and Afriforum peddled. You just don’t have the right to call yourself a SAffer any more. And that is the real tragedy.
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Picture: The White House / X
