Allegations of a “white genocide” in South Africa have risen to international prominence since US President Donald Trump became a conduit for them. Having terminated all other refugee programmes, the Trump administration very publicly welcomed an initial group of “Afrikaner refugees” to the United States on 12 May 2025. Soon thereafter, President Trump met with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and his delegation in the Oval Office.

Mr Trump was quickly criticised for making unfounded claims about the maltreatment of “whites” in South Africa. However, while there is currently no genocide of “white” South Africans, and most “white” South Africans do not yet qualify as refugees, the situation of South African “whites” is worse than Mr Trump’s critics acknowledge.

The word “genocide” is notoriously vague. For example, the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, defines genocide as “any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group;
2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”

This definition suggests that intentionally killing a single member of a relevant group could count as genocide, given the inclusion of “in part.” Otherwise, clearly there is some unstated minimum number or proportion of a group who must be killed before there can be said to be a genocide. It is unlikely that any such threshold is being met in South Africa.

This does not mean that “whites” are not being targeted in significant ways. The purported basis for the genocide accusation is the epidemic of “farm murders,” which have been said to affect “white” farmers disproportionately. This accusation has been quickly dismissed by various media commentators, who have swallowed President Ramaphosa’s claim that the farm murders are merely part of the broader problem of murder and other violent crime in South Africa. This is a complicated empirical matter. However, it is inappropriate to ignore a carefully qualified analysis that suggests that “white” farmers may indeed be being disproportionally targeted, especially in some parts of the country.  

We do not yet know enough about the circumstances of the particular Afrikaners who have been flown to the United States as refugees to know whether they all personally had reasonable fears of being racially targeted in violent ways. However, one of them reports having been attacked on her farm four times. Moreover, there is evidence that at least some of the murders of “white” farmers have been motivated, at least in part, by racial animosity.

Moreover, because the perpetrators often torture their victims, and steal relatively little, there is good reason to think that the crimes are motivated by hate. “White” farmers and their families have been beaten, immersed in bathtubs of boiling water, burned with hot clothes irons or molten plastic, stripped, raped, tied to vehicles with rope or barbed wire and dragged long distances, had their eyes gouged out, and been tortured with an electric drill, strangled, dismembered, and hacked to death.

In one case, two farm women were stabbed in the vagina with broken glass, and one had her breast cut off while she was still alive. Even if some of these victims may not have been racially targeted, farmers have reasonable fears of being victims of violent crime—as indeed do many “black” South Africans.

Not all migrants are refugees. Like “genocide,” “refugee” can be understood in broader or narrower ways. According to one definition, a refugee is “a person who has been forced to leave their country in order to escape war, persecution, or natural disaster.” If those particular Afrikaners who were flown to the United States are not escaping persecution—a term suggesting something more severe than discrimination—then they are migrants rather than refugees, under this definition.

Other definitions are more expansive. One such definition understands a refugee as “a person who flees to a foreign country or power to escape danger or persecution” (my emphasis). More of the Afrikaners who were welcomed to the United States might meet this definition, but so would many other South Africans who move to the United States, given how dangerous it is in South Africa, especially in certain areas.

According to yet another definition, a refugee is “a person who has escaped from their own country for political, religious, or economic reasons or because of war.” The inclusion here of “economic reasons” might encompass some who would not be refugees under the first two definitions. Again, however, it is certainly not only Afrikaners—or South African “whites” more generally—who would have “economic reasons” to relocate to a richer, more functional society. Indeed, the overwhelming majority of the poorest people in South Africa are “black” rather than “white.”

This has led some to ask why, of all the people in the world to accept as refugees, the Trump administration has chosen “white” South Africans who hardly stand out as those most in need of refuge. One suggestion is that it is precisely because they are “white.”

That may be true. However, those asking this question are generally reluctant to ask another, comparable question: Why, of all the countries South Africa could have targeted in the International Court of Justice, did it choose Israel? Why has it pursued a dubious case of genocide when a real genocide is taking place on the African continent—in Sudan? (Indeed, in defiance of a South African court ruling, the government even refused to arrest Sudan’s then-president Omar al-Bashir when he visited the country in 2015.) Why is South Africa silent on the massive human rights abuses perpetrated by its repressive allies, such as Iran, Russia, and China, while it relentlessly pursues Israel, a broadly liberal democratic state? This silence does not excuse the Trump administration’s refugee policy, but it does show that Mr Trump is not the only person to be selective about his responses to real or putative atrocities.

South African Lawfare at The Hague

Motions before any court—criminal or civil, national or international—contain references to hard evidence and a careful reading of legal precedent. The South African ICJ application has neither.

QuilletteNorman J.W. Goda

Although there is currently no “white” genocide in South Africa, it is not impossible that there will be one in the future—even though the country likes to vaunt its peaceful transition to democracy. President Trump played a video during the South African delegation’s visit. It included clips of Julius Malema, leader of the so-called Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), now the fourth-largest political party in South Africa. Mr Malema is well known for regularly chanting, “Dubul' ibhunu” (“Shoot the Boer”—where “Boer” can variably be understood as “farmer” or “Afrikaner”).

South African courts originally judged that this phrase constituted prohibited hate speech, but that decision has since been overturned by a higher court. To put this in perspective, while Mr Malema, a prominent politician, is given free rein to call for the killing of fellow citizens, a previously unknown estate agent was found guilty of using a racial slur about “blacks” by the Equality Court, and required to pay R150,000 to the Oliver and Adelaide Tambo Foundation. Criminal charges were subsequently also brought against her, and she was sentenced to pay a fine of R5000, and to two years’ imprisonment, suspended for five years. This kind of differential treatment reflects the power dynamics of post-Apartheid South Africa.

Apologists for the “Kill the Boer” song, including former President Thabo Mbeki, argue that the words are not to be taken literally. But some clearly understand them literally. In one case, for example, the blood of the victims of a farm murder was used to write the words “Kill the Boer” on the walls of their homestead.

Julius Malema has explicitly refused to rule out the possibility of calling for a genocide. He has said: “We are not calling for the slaughtering of white people—at least for now,” on more than one occasion. He has refused to pledge that he would not call for such slaughter in the future, and has reaffirmed his willingness to use violence, even though he lives in a constitutional democracy where “blacks” constitute eighty or ninety percent of the population, depending on how broadly the category “black” is construed. Meanwhile, the “white” proportion of the South African population has declined from around 22 percent in 1921, to thirteen percent in 1995, and 7.3 percent in 2022.

Some might wish to dismiss Mr Malema as a fringe element. However, singing “Kill the Boer” is not restricted to his EFF party. It has been sung by former President Jacob Zuma, now head of uMkhonto weSizwe (MK), the third largest party, and by the ANC, the largest party. The ANC has also stoked racial tensions, and aligned with others who have done likewise. President Ramaphosa has dismissed a call to condemn the EFF’s singing of the song.

Race-baiting is common among the dominant Left of South African politics, and in the universities. Consider, for example, the Pan Africanist Congress’s slogan, “One Settler, One Bullet” (where “whites” are regarded as settlers), and the University of Cape Town student who sported a T-shirt on which was written “Kill All Whites.” The majority of South Africans evidently do not support this divisiveness, but the power of elites to whip up violence should not be underestimated. 

The EFF need not come to power in order to engage in genocidal acts. The state has proven completely unable to either curb the country’s usual violence or rein in civil unrest. If genocidal violence broke out, even without government instigation or approval, it is unclear that the state could quickly end it.

Even if there is never a “white” (or other minority) genocide in South Africa, there are other possible bad outcomes. Current levels of racial violence may increase. There is already considerable discrimination against “white” South Africans (and sometimes other “racial” minorities). Indeed, there are currently 142 “racial Acts of Parliament … operative.” These include affirmative action policies that their defenders claim are justifiable measures, necessary to correct historical injustices. Indeed, that view is so dominant within South Africa that the few people who oppose it are condemned and even ostracised. Yet, there are good reasons to reject the extreme racial preference practised in South Africa. It has been very harmful to the country, deterring much-needed investment, and prioritising sinecures for some over service-delivery for the majority.

Why Violence and Looting Have Exploded Across South Africa

The poor and unemployed have demonstrated that their patience is limited and that they are a keg of dynamite waiting to go off.

QuilletteR W Johnson

While the most privileged and well-connected “blacks” have been economically uplifted, the majority of “black” South Africans remain impoverished, and South Africa continues to have the highest level of inequality in the world. This is partly—but not wholly, as the ANC would have us believe—attributable to the legacy of Apartheid. Much of it is the result of the corrupt policies and practices of the ANC, which ruled South Africa for the first thirty years of its democracy. This is evidenced by the fact that the Gini coefficient has not decreased, and possibly even increased since the advent of democracy.

The country is falling apart. Electricity supply by the state provider is erratic. The roads in many municipalities are riddled with potholes. Schools serving the country’s poorest have disgracefully low educational and infrastructural standards. The public healthcare sector is in tatters. Law enforcement is dysfunctional.

President Ramaphosa has characterised those Afrikaners who took up the Trump administration’s offer of refugee status as “cowardly.” But “whites” who criticise the racial politics characteristic of the ANC and the parties to its left are routinely branded as “racists,” no matter how impeccable their anti-Apartheid credentials may be. Constructive citizenship by “whites” is not welcomed, unless it toes the party line. Some “whites” may be willing to put up with this kind of treatment. Those who are “gatvol” (fed up) and want to leave are not cowards.

None of this is to suggest that “whites” are treated anything like as badly in post-Apartheid South Africa as “blacks” were prior to the transition to democracy. This fact has led some to think that Afrikaners and other “whites” must count themselves lucky. Of course, the situation for “whites” could be even worse, but that is not the standard by which we should judge whether citizens of a country have good reason to stay or to go.