Who are Afrikaners? Is there a genocide of white South Africans as Trump claims?

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa visited the Oval Office of the White House to discuss bilateral issues affecting his country, South Africa, and the United States. Instead, his counterpart responded with a frontal accusation of alleged "genocide" against the country's white population. These words strained a country that has suffered racial persecution by whites against blacks for more than 40 years during apartheid.

US President Donald Trump had another tense meeting on his own soil with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who is on an official visit to the US capital, Washington.

The meeting, which began with a handshake between the two, reached its climax when Trump played a video, to the delight of everyone present, including Ramaphosa, denouncing an alleged "genocide" against the white Afrikaner minority.

A five-minute video showed African politicians giving speeches advocating violence against whites and images of mounds and crosses that Trump claimed represented more than 1,000 murdered farmers. The South African leader, who rejected such a definition, proposed that Trump "reset" bilateral relations without giving much importance to the accusations he faces.

"If there really were a genocide against Afrikaner farmers, I assure you these people would not be here, including my own Minister of Agriculture," Ramaphosa said.

"They're being executed, and they happen to be white, and most of them are farmers. It's a difficult situation. I don't know how to explain it," Trump wondered, insisting: there are "thousands of stories" that confirm the persecution.

Eyes set on South Africa

US President Donald Trump prepared for his upcoming meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa by inviting 49 Afrikaners to his country as refugees last week. According to the South African Department of Transport, the group departed from O.R. Tambo International Airport in Johannesburg on a chartered flight to Dulles Airport in Washington, D.C.

South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola stated that there is "absolutely no evidence" to support the alleged persecution of Afrikaners. The move sparked a diplomatic clash just before the two leaders sat down on the Oval Office sofa. But there's more: In March, Trump suspended all foreign aid and cooperation with South Africa, alleging that the country confiscates land from white farmers and maintains a hostile stance toward Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), the United Nations' highest judicial body.

The accusation comes after Ramaphosa's government enacted an expropriation law to try to reverse racial inequalities inherited from apartheid, according to South Africa, and allows for the expropriation of land without compensation in cases of public interest. Thus, Afrikaners are once again at the center of the controversy.

Who are Afrikaners?

Afrikaners are a Southern African ethnic group descended from predominantly Dutch settlers who first arrived at the Cape of Good Hope in 1652. Until 1994, they dominated South Africa's politics as well as the country's commercial agricultural sector

Afrikaans, a language derived from the Dutch dialect of South Holland, is the mother tongue of Afrikaners and many Cape Coloureds. As of the 2022 South African National Census, 10.6% of South Africans spoke Afrikaans as their first language at home, making it the third-most commonly spoken home language after Zulu and Xhosa.

The European presence at the Cape began with Portuguese exploration in the late 15th century, followed by the Dutch East India Company (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie; VOC) establishing a supply station at Cape Town in 1652 to support its trade route to Asia. Though the VOC discouraged permanent European settlement, logistical needs and retiring company servants led to the growth of a settler community. Between 1685 and 1707, Dutch families and French Huguenots were granted free passage and farmland, contributing agricultural skills and reinforcing a shared settler identity.

This shared identity laid the foundation for Afrikaner nationalism, which emerged more formally in the 20th century through organizations like the Broederbond and political movements such as the National Party, founded in 1914. The party gained power in 1948 and instituted the apartheid system, enforcing strict racial segregation. After prolonged resistance and negotiations, apartheid ended with the country's first multiracial elections in 1994, leading to the National Party's eventual dissolution in 2005.

What was Apartheid in South Africa and Namibia?

Apartheid was a system of institutionalised racial segregation that existed in South Africa and South West Africa (now Namibia) from 1948 to the early 1990s. It was characterised by an authoritarian political culture based on baasskap which ensured that South Africa was dominated politically, socially, and economically by the nation's minority white population. Under this minoritarian system, white citizens held the highest status, followed by Indians, Coloureds and black Africans, in that order.

The economic legacy and social effects of apartheid continue to the present day, particularly inequality.

Broadly speaking, apartheid was delineated into petty apartheid, which entailed the segregation of public facilities and social events, and grand apartheid, which strictly separated housing and employment opportunities by race. The first apartheid law was the Prohibition of Mixed Marriages Act, 1949, followed closely by the Immorality Amendment Act of 1950, which made it illegal for most South African citizens to marry or pursue sexual relationships across racial lines.

The Population Registration Act, 1950 classified all South Africans into one of four racial groups based on appearance, known ancestry, socioeconomic status, and cultural lifestyle: "Black", "White", "Coloured", and "Indian", the last two of which included several sub-classifications. Places of residence were determined by racial classification. Between 1960 and 1983, 3.5 million black Africans were removed from their homes and forced into segregated neighbourhoods as a result of apartheid legislation, in some of the largest mass evictions in modern history. Most of these targeted removals were intended to restrict the black population to ten designated "tribal homelands", also known as bantustans, four of which became nominally independent states.

The government announced that relocated persons would lose their South African citizenship as they were absorbed into the bantustans.

Apartheid sparked significant international and domestic opposition, resulting in some of the most influential global social movements of the 20th century. It was the target of frequent condemnation in the United Nations and brought about extensive international sanctions, including arms embargoes and economic sanctions on South Africa. During the 1970s and 1980s, internal resistance to apartheid became increasingly militant, prompting brutal crackdowns by the National Party ruling government and protracted sectarian violence that left thousands dead or in detention.

The Truth and Reconciliation Commission found that there were 21,000 deaths from political violence, with 7,000 deaths between 1948 and 1989, and 14,000 deaths and 22,000 injuries in the transition period between 1990 and 1994. Some reforms of the apartheid system were undertaken, including allowing for Indian and Coloured political representation in parliament, but these measures failed to appease most activist groups.

A forgotten conflict

The dark chapter of Apartheid ended in 1991, and in 1994 Nelson Mandela won a peaceful and democratic election with over 62 percent of the popular vote. Although the South African population has not forgotten those years, US President Donald Trump took it upon himself to bring the same issue to the table in the Oval Office, but he did so in the opposite direction.

"They're usually white farmers fleeing South Africa, and it's very sad to see. I hope we can get an explanation," he told the media.

Opposite him, Elon Musk, born in Pretoria, South Africa, nodded. He too did his part: Grok, the artificial intelligence chatbot on the social network X, is concerned about South African racial politics and posts unsolicited claims about white persecution and "genocide."

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, at the White House meeting, simply said that while crime is a problem in South Africa, the majority of victims of violence "are not white, but Black." And, being direct about the issue that concerns Trump, that of land expropriation, he noted that while the Constitution protects the "sanctity of land ownership," his administration also has the right to expropriate land for public use.