First group of White South Africans granted refugee status depart to U.S.

The first group of White South Africans who were granted refugee status by the U.S. is set to fly out of Johannesburg on Sunday, officials said.

The flight from Johannesburg’s OR Tambo Airport was set to depart around 2 p.m. ET en route to Dakar for refueling before flying to Washington, D.C. The group includes 49 Afrikaner South Africans, made up of mainly families, as well as a few young couples in their twenties and older people.

“The application for the permit (to land) said it’s the Afrikaners who are relocating to the USA as refugees,” Collen Msibi, a spokesperson for the South African Transport Ministry, told AFP.

The plane – a U.S. charter aircraft –  is set to arrive at Washington’s Dulles International Airport at about 6 a.m. on Monday, and then will fly to Texas.

Msibi said his department had not received any other applications for further resettlement flights.

U.S. officials have planned a Monday press event at Dulles airport to welcome the group, according to government documents obtained by CBS News last week. Sources familiar with the effort told CBS News the timing of the plan could change.

In February, President Trump issued an executive order directing officials to use the U.S. refugee program to resettle Afrikaners, who are an ethnic group in South Africa made up of descendants of European colonists.

Mr. Trump, at the time, claimed that White South Africans faced “government-sponsored race-based discrimination.” He cited a law that U.S. conservatives, like South African-born Elon Musk, have said allowed racially motivated seizures of land owned by White South Africans. The land expropriation law is meant to redress inequalities entrenched under the former apartheid system.

South Africa’s government has strongly denied any land confiscations or racially motivated discrimination.

The hastily arranged initiative to welcome Afrikaners stands in stark contrast to the Trump administration’s move to ban most other refugees from entering the U.S.

The processing of Afrikaners granted refugee status has also been unusually fast. Before Mr. Trump’s second term, the State Department said the refugee process, on average, took between 18 to 24 months to complete due to background checks, medical screenings and other interviews. The Afrikaners ready to travel to the U.S. have gone through that process in a matter of months or even weeks.

Meanwhile, relations between South Africa and the United States have nose-dived this year over a range of domestic and foreign policy issues, culminating in Washington’s expulsion of Pretoria’s ambassador in March.

Mr. Trump said in March that any South African farmer seeking to “flee” would have a “rapid pathway” to US citizenship, despite halting all other refugee arrivals to the U.S. immediately after taking office in January.

South Africa’s foreign ministry on Friday said the resettlement of Afrikaners “under the guise of being ‘refugees’ is entirely politically motivated and designed to question South Africa’s constitutional democracy”.

It would, however, “not block citizens who seek to depart the country from doing so,” it added.

In a statement, the State Department said the American Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, has been interviewing those who have applied for resettlement to the U.S. under Mr. Trump’s directive to welcome Afrikaners and that it continues to receive inquiries.

“While we are unable to comment on individual cases, the Department of State is prioritizing consideration for U.S. refugee resettlement of Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination,” the department added.

White South Africans, who make up 7.3% of the population, generally enjoy a higher standard of living than the black majority of the country.

Mainly Afrikaner-led governments imposed the brutal race-based apartheid system that denied Black South Africans, who made up 75% of the population, political and economic rights. The country allowed equal voting in 1994, leading to the election of Nelson Mandela as the first Black Prime Minister. 

contributed to this report.