A curious pantomime is going to be performed this week when a whole bunch of Afrikaner farmer ārefugeesā arrive in the US of A to be welcomed with relief and open arms by a frantic US public emotionally torn by their life-and-death struggle for survival in the dark depths of South Africa.
This will be the first group to arrive in the US after being vetted by the US embassy in SA following US President Donald Trumpās executive order to resettle these Afrikaner "refugees" who have been āvictims of unjust racial discriminationā.
How are we, ordinary South Africans, supposed to respond to this effort? Incredulity comes to mind. They will be the richest, most pampered ārefugeesā in the long and sad history of people displaced by war and victimisation around the world. There are reality TV stars more deserving of being classified as refugees than the average Afrikaner farmer. There are Instagram influencers who are more deserving. Itās the first refugee crisis where the evacuees are going to be more upset about the WiFi signal than the war zone.
On the other hand, it could be a reason to change the slogan on the Statue of Liberty to āSend us your disgruntled, your property-rights enthusiasts, and your mildly inconveniencedā. And there are questions: will they be able to bring their bakkies?, for example.
As comedian Chester Missing suggests, we are not going to send our best (echoing Trumpās statements about Mexican illegal immigrants); if you canāt make it as a white South African, where the whole social deck is tipped in your favour, your chance of making it in the ultra-competitive USA is not going to be great.
Sorry to be so sarcastic, but can you be otherwise? Its a terrible thing to want to leave your country, and all South African's should be ashamed that some do. We are essentially all to blame. Its not helped by politicians throwing political red meat at their followers, inviting them to despise groups on the basis of their race. Its not helped by political groups claiming victimisation in circumstances of mild discomfort. Its not helped by economic decline, high levels of corruption and bad management. We all know this.
But the 50-odd people who have been accepted really should feel incredibly special. Before Trump, the US normally accepted about 100,000 from genuinely war-torn places around the world every year before Trump pulled the plug on the entire program. Instead of residents of the DRC, Syria, Sudan, Afghanistan, or Myanmar, the US is going to gain a whole 50-some South Africans. It's beyond satire.
Yet, there is more to this sad pantomime than meets the eye, and I hope the SA government is braced for this because I can guess what is going to happen next week. The ārefugeesā will arrive at Dulles International Airport on a State Department-chartered plane, and then, according to the Washington Post, they will be taken to Virginia (a nice rural place) or perhaps Texas. Once they arrive, there will be - and I am not making this up - āa ceremonial news conferenceā.
Now, in my shrewd estimation, the selection process was based on two requirements: support for Donald Trump and recent - or perhaps not even very recent - an experience of crime, SA style. And the ārefugeesā will make statements about their often genuinely horrible experiences. And these tales of woe will be aired widely, and SA is going to look pretty bad.
So, is SA prepared for this contrived news assault? My guess is that it is not and my evidence is the statement issued by the Ministry of International Relations and Cooperation in response to the ārefugees newsā. The statement confirmed that Deputy Minister Alvin Botes held a ācordial discussionā with the United States Deputy Secretary of State, Christopher Landau on the topic last week.
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It makes some very accurate assertions, the best of which is that it is āmost regrettableā that the resettlement āunder the guise of being 'refugees' is entirely politically motivated and designed to question South Africaās constitutional democracy; a country which has in fact suffered true persecution under Apartheid rule ā¦ā. Good point.
But then it goes on to make two further statements that are simply false. The first is this: āWe reiterate that allegations of discrimination are unfounded. The South African Police Services statistics on farm-related crimes do not support allegations of violent crime targeted at farmers generally or any particular raceā.
Much of the research on farm murders in SA does not conclude that the allegations of disproportionate murders of white farmers are āunfoundedā. The Africa Check report below is dated but typical of SAās recent analytical research on the topic, concluding that āWhile questions remain about the accuracy of farm murder statistics and an accurate estimate of the affected population is unavailable, any farm murder rate should be viewed with cautionā.
Kate
They are difficult to prove, partly because the SA Police Service just doesnāt maintain statistics in this way. For one thing, the statistics donāt distinguish between farms, plots, and small holdings. Here is a page out of the most recent crime statistics, for example. And you do have to ask why the SAPS statistics are collected this way and whether they are trying to hide something.
There is a different approach, however, demonstrating disproportionate attacks on white commercial farmers that does not emanate from AfriForum or the Freedom Front. James Myburgh, editor of PoliticsWeb, wrote this in 2018: Farm murders: Fact-checking the fact-checkers.
While āfact-checkersā have raised legitimate points around the methodology," it is unclear why instead of trying to come up with a better estimate they went with the assertion that this was, alone among all the many great mysteries of the universe, fundamentally unknowableā. He then proceeds to do the calculation (have a look, it's very thoroughly done), and comes to the conclusion that murders of white farmers are about 3.2 times the national average.
It is also possible to just apply logic to this: farmers are, by definition, isolated and often richer than the community in which they operate. With politicians positively egging their supporters on by making not entirely unfounded claims that the land of indigenous people was stolen, and singing āKill the Farmerā. I mean, what do you think is going to happen? The mediaās coyness about this in SA is inadvertently revealing. The Transvaal Agricultural Union makes a good point when it says even using the SAPS' numbers, there are more farm murders than cash-in-transit heists, but cash-in-transit heists have a dedicated unit.
On the other hand, just looking at the murder rate in SA, it's extremely hard to conclude that it is SA's most pressing crime prevention issue. That is quite obviously drunken brawls in public places, largely between people who know each other. Perhaps the victims should apply to the US for refugee status?
The second false-ish statement by Foreign Affairs is the dubious claim that āThrough progressive judgements from the South African courts, particularly the Constitutional Court, our State has demonstrated a principled commitment to protect minorities and vulnerable groups ā¦ā.
That elides the obvious fact that SA has lots of legislation that deliberately and explicitly discriminates against minority racial groups, mainly whites. Of course, we all know why this is, and don't necessarily lament it: it's intended as rectification for prior discrimination against black South Africans.
Trumpās supporters, including former South African Elon Musk, often highlight that there are 44 pieces of explicitly racially discriminatory legislation on SA's statute books - as though this is a big revelation.
That is, in principle, not good. But the truth is that compared to the Apartheid era, it's peanuts. During apartheid, there were thousands of racially discriminatory laws. And they discriminated in a much more egregious way, sometimes without even mentioning race. For example, spaza shops in townships had very harsh licensing laws and were often not allowed to sell paint or cement until late apartheid, never mind alcohol or medicine.
One related question: Why is Trump doing this?
One reason is that US commentator Tucker Carlson has made a big issue out of it over the years. But it's really a magicianās sleight-of-hand trick. Trump knows closing the refugee system down is going to be controversial. Already, a US court has ordered him to reinstate the admission of refugees whose admission has been approved.
GENE JOHNSON
So why not make it an issue about South Africans who are getting refugee status, rather than the many thousands of people who are not? The amorality is awful, but the politics is darkly smart, as it so often is with Trump.
And there is another reason: I think Trump likes to choose issues that indicate support for his largely white, right-wing constituency and that too is typically foxy politics from a master of the game. It's what used to be called ādog-whistle politics: coded or subtle language in political messaging that conveys one meaning to the general public but to a more specific constituency, it telegraphs what is often too controversial or discriminatory to be explicitly stated. Maybe that was before the dog whistle was dumped in favour of just being directly outrageous.
For South Africans, the question is whether this changes local and international politics at all. That depends on whether SAās politicians can respond effectively without tarnishing SA as a racially segregationist skunk. Its message is inevitably going to be tainted by the association of discrimination with corruption, and perhaps also that quite a lot of water is now under the bridge after apartheid's demise.
My guess is that SA is not ready for this: South Africans generally have a different outlook reinforced by years of politics that has been adamantly and vociferously founded on the claim that reverse racism is not actually racism.
The problem is that internationally, people donāt have the same mentality: almost everybody almost everywhere worries that they could be discriminated against for some reason. And many have been discriminated against, for one reason or another. And the consequences have, in some situations, been pretty awful, as we all know.
That tricky understanding gap is about to be very severely tested. š„
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