White South African New Ambassador To US Tells BBC: Trump Wrong, White Genocide Doesn’t Exist
South Africa’s new ambassador to Washington has a personal reason to challenge Donald Trump’s assertion that there is a genocide against white Afrikaners – he is “a born Afrikaner” himself.
“Is he talking about us?” Roelf Meyer remembers thinking when he first heard the US President say it.
His response to Trump’s claim is blunt.
The notion of a mass attack on the white Afrikaner minority in South Africa does not exist, he told the BBC, adding that his identity gave him the legitimacy to say so.
Meyer was one of the chief mediators to end white-minority rule, known as Apartheid, in South Africa in the 1990s. He was appointed ambassador to the US in April after diplomatic relations between the US and South Africa soured.
Meyer said in an interview with the BBC that the facts about violence in South Africa had been misrepresented and that he had never received a clear answer about where this “misdirection of information” was coming from.
Last year, Trump accused South Africa of white genocide in a meeting with President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House and launched a US refugee pathway for Afrikaners.
Since last year, nearly 13,000 refugees have been admitted to the US and all but three were South African.
Among them was Lielie, the name she uses publicly, who moved with her family to Texas from South Africa, where they had lived on her stepfather’s farm, growing macadamia nuts and bananas.
Despite walls around the house, an electric fence and eight bull terriers, she said she felt “fear the whole time” and that on three occasions she saw people entering her property.
“Nothing was stolen, we weren’t harmed, but there are friends of my husband, people that lived around us – they were brutally attacked,” she said.
She said since moving to the US under the Trump administration’s refugee pathway her life had changed, she felt safer walking around and “my kids can actually play outside”.
The Trump administration is planning to admit up to 17,500 additional white Afrikaners as refugees over the next 12 months, according to a notice sent to Congress on Tuesday.
A White House spokeswoman said in a statement to the BBC: “President Trump has provided a lifeline for Afrikaners, who are being raped, maimed, killed and driven off their property across South Africa.
“While the South African government and many in the media have brushed off the horrific lived experiences of this community, the Trump administration continues to process applications for refugee status because the President has a humanitarian heart.”/BBC
