Afrikaner protestors claim victimhood, seek refuge in Trump’s America – Ivo Vegter - Biznews

Ivo Vegter

The white nationalist right has long sneered at the “victim Olympics” of the left, but given half a chance, they whine just as hard.

A group of uniformly white Afrikaners demonstrated outside the US Embassy in Pretoria on Saturday to thank US president Donald Trump for his half-informed and half-baked executive order of 7 February 2025.

In the order, Trump mischaracterised the recently signed Expropriation Act as being intended “to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation”, leading to “disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners”.

In addition to suspending aid and assistance to South Africa, the order also aims to “promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation”.

At the rally in Pretoria, Afrikaner nationalist agitator Willem Petzer – who once described one of his social media channels as “the best racist, sexist, homophobic, transphobic and Islamophobic chat in South Africa” – handed over a wordy memorandum penned by Andries Raath, emeritus professor in the department of history, philosophy, and public law at the University of the Free State.

“Save South Africa”
The memorandum covers familiar ground, accusing the “ANC government” (no mention of the Government of National Unity here) of “Marxist Communism”, listing race-based legislation, explaining the Expropriation Act, enumerating farm murders and attacks, and summarising the foreign policy positions of South Africa that are inimical to American interests.

It expresses appreciation for Trump’s “efforts and leadership to save South Africa from oppression and bring our country back into a free geopolitical order and an environment without all the evils we are subjected to under the ANC’s misguided rule.”

As if it is Trump’s business to “save South Africa”.

It continues by welcoming “all efforts by international powers to work towards making our beloved South Africa great again,” on behalf of the white minority in general and “the needy, destitute and oppressed farming communities in particular”.

Petzer addressed the crowd from the back of a bakkie, standing in front of a banner that read “Make South Africa Great Again”. He began by claiming that he has experienced racial discrimination “since the day I was born”.

Larger organisations representing Afrikaners, such as AfriForum and the Solidarity Union, have had to distance themselves from Petzer in the past, and have rejected Trump’s offer to resettle Afrikaner refugees.

It is clear, therefore, that Petzer does not speak for “the white minority”, nor for “ethnic Afrikaners”, but only for a minority of that minority.

Reddit comments
Over on r/southafrica on Reddit, on a picture of the protest that also illustrates this article, the comments were universally negative, but a delight to read.

“Let them go. Trump will care for them and love them in America… Maybe we can start a back a buddy to get them there,” wrote u/almostrainman.

“Just leave them. If they want to leave, let them. It weeds out all the bad ones,” wrote u/CapMyster.

“They are dying to go and work the fields in the US,” wrote u/Marchys11.

“As an Afrikaner, all I can say is I’m ashamed,” wrote u/Shinroo.

“As an ‘Afrikaner’, flippen hel man. They are embarrassing themselves and the people arouns [sic] them,” wrote u/Southern-Recover-474.

“This picture just screams; Covid-denying, Antivax, Ivermectin snorting, Fox news inducing ignorance. Also, White F***ing Privilege,” wrote u/Beyond_the_one.

“Most of these people are in my age group. There goes the notion that Apartheid education benefitted white people,” wrote u/Stropi-wan.

As I surmised, Petzer’s lot might be noisy, but they do not speak for all Afrikaners or all white people.

Great “again”?
There’s a lot to unpack in all this. Let’s start with the banner that said, “Make South Africa Great Again.”

When, one might well ask, was South Africa ever “great”?

It was doing okay in the mid to late 2000s, growing at 5% for a few years, before socialist chickens came home to roost, Jacob Zuma sold the state to the Guptas, and Eskom crashed and burnt. South Africa was never really “great” under the ANC government, though.

And South Africa certainly was not great under apartheid, either, nor under colonialism before that.

Braaivleis, rugby, sunny skies. and Chevrolet, a heart transplant, some unoriginal dolosse, Sun City, the Kreepy Krauly, the Rand Show, and Springbok Radio were not enough to make South Africa great, given the racial segregation and brutal fascism that sustained minority rule.

A better slogan for those of us who are serious about reforming South Africa’s public policy would be to “Make South Africa Great”. Not “again”, because a classically liberal, non-racial, free society would be a first in the country’s entire history.

Valid complaints
Many of Raath and Petzer’s complaints are, in principle, valid, of course, despite the ethnic nationalism in which they are couched.

Race-based laws are inimical to economic growth and progress, and do lead to unjust outcomes, even when they are intended to remedy past injustice. This journal, and the Institute of Race Relations (IRR) that publishes it, has been a vocal opponent of race-based laws and discrimination since 1929, including in the modern democratic era.

The Expropriation Law is a terrible piece of legislation, in that it renders all property subject to expropriation, leaves the justifications for expropriation vague and open to interpretation, and does an end-run around the courts. Again, the Daily Friend and the IRR have strongly campaigned against it.

Contrary to Trump’s executive order, however, it is not targeted at “ethnic minority Afrikaners”, nor at “agricultural property”. It can be used against anyone, including the black majority, and against any property, not only land.

It is true that farm murders are a serious concern that ought to merit special strategy and tactics on the part of South Africa’s police forces. This journal, and the IRR, have both treated farm murders seriously.

Yet they are not sufficient reason to consider Afrikaners to be oppressed, since attacks also happen to English-speaking farmers, and to black and coloured farmers and farmworkers.

Victim Olympics
More generally, life is far more dangerous as a black person in South Africa than it is as Willem Petzer, despite the discrimination he claims to have experienced all his life.

It seems strange to me that a group of Afrikaners, who once happily oppressed and discriminated against the black majority, who still enjoy a much higher labour force participation rate than black, coloured or Indian South Africans, who still enjoy a mere 7.9% unemployment rate (about a fifth of that of black South Africans), and who still typically own 20 times the wealth of the typical black household, now not only whines about “reverse discrimination”, but has the temerity to ask a foreign power to intervene in South Africa’s internal affairs.

Ironically, and hypocritically, these are the same people who denounce the intersectional social analysis of the left as “victim Olympics”, yet here they are, protesting that they are South Africa’s biggest victims and merit refugee status.

“Ethnic Afrikaners”
It is notable that Trump’s executive order applies only to white Afrikaners. It doesn’t apply to English-speaking white people, who are just as prejudiced by racial legislation as Afrikaners are. It also doesn’t apply to non-white Afrikaans speakers, though I’d challenge the US State Department to make a legally defensible distinction between Afrikaans-speaking coloured people and “ethnic Afrikaners” when it comes to processing refugee resettlement applications.

South Africa’s race-based laws also negatively affect Indians and coloured people, yet they don’t merit refugee status, in Trump’s world view.

Further, the Expropriation Act has not yet affected anyone, but will in future affect all South Africans. Likewise, all South Africans are victimised by the ANC-led government of national unity’s “Marxist Communism” (as Raath vaguely describes the National Democratic Revolution).

But extending refugee status to all South Africans wouldn’t do. It would clash with Trump’s earlier executive order, which suspended the US Refugee Admissions Program on the (mistaken) grounds that “[t]he United States lacks the ability to absorb large numbers of migrants, and in particular, refugees, into its communities in a manner that does not compromise the availability of resources for Americans, that protects their safety and security, and that ensures the appropriate assimilation of refugees”.

That order does make provision for case-by-case exceptions, where “the entry of such aliens as refugees is in the national interest and does not pose a threat to the security or welfare of the United States”.

One can safely surmise that admitting refugees from the depredations of South Africa’s corrupt and socialist government who happen to be black (or English-speaking liberals) would in Trump’s view not be “in the national interest”. This raises the question why he thinks “ethnic Afrikaners” are special.

Perhaps Trump realises that he’ll need people to work America’s farms once he deports, en masse, all the Mexican migrant workers who do the jobs native-born Americans are too rich and lazy to do. Importing “farmers” from Africa, who by happy happenstance happen to be white, might just solve a prickly problem produced by Trump’s xenophobic policies.

Not special
South Africa belongs to all who live in it, and South Africa’s problems are the responsibility of all who live in it. For a minority of Afrikaners to claim special victim status is perverse. They are not unique. They are not special.

Petzer’s followers do not contribute to the betterment of South Africa by calling for intervention by poorly informed foreign powers. All that will achieve is to raise the hackles of the government and make it more determined to resist American “imperialism”.

By basing their appeal to Trump on ethnic nationalism, they harm the cause of those of us who advocate non-racialism and seek to secure private property rights on the basis of classical liberal principles.

It would be better for everyone in South Africa if they just quietly left, with our hearty good wishes for a better life as refugees elsewhere. Let’s hope they can afford the airfare.

Ivo Vegter is a freelance journalist, columnist and speaker

https://www.biznews.com/thought-leaders/2025/02/18/ivo-vegter-hypocrisy-of-rights-victim-olympics

This article was first published on the Daily Friend.