Why white South Africans are fleeing surging violence and ‘racist’ legal guidelines for brand spanking new lives in America, reveals SUE REID

Erik Uys has family roots in South Africa going back years. Now he lives on a cattle ranch in the American state of Arkansas thousands of miles from his home country.

The 29-year-old is one of 25,000 white farmers who have left for the US as South Africa stands accused of endemic racism – favouring the majority black population against people with European ancestry.

Some will never return to the ‘Rainbow Nation’, which is racked by rising numbers of murders and rapes, making it one of the most dangerous places in the world for anyone, of any skin colour, to live.

‘Three of the eight South African cattlemen on my Arkansas farm have local brides and are settling permanently,’ Erik told the Mail last week.

‘I work seven days a week non-stop. For me, it’s about better money. The pay rate is six or seven times higher here.’

Now President Trump is offering ‘refugee status’ to white South Africans (many like Erik of Dutch descent who call themselves Afrikaans) who say they face ‘unjust racial discrimination’.

Trump’s closest adviser is the Tesla billionaire Elon Musk, who grew up in South Africa and has claimed that the country’s black politicians plan to carry out ‘genocide’ against the country’s white minority.

Strict ‘black empowerment’ policies put them at the back of job queues in the ailing nation, which has an unemployment rate of 42 per cent.

Only a fraction of adults pay taxes (in 2020 there were about 5.2 million individual taxpayers, only nine per cent of the population) leaving the nation in increasing debt, with infrastructure in tatters.

At least 20,000 Afrikaners have inquired at the US Embassy in South Africa about becoming refugees. The US President has condemned South Africa’s recent Expropriation Act, which allows the state to seize land and property from private citizens without compensation, as racist.

Even more white South Africans are expected to flee overseas after another radical new law to bring property ownership in line with racial demographics was suddenly announced on February 20 by the Pretoria government.

An expansion of the Expropriation Act, if passed by parliament, would mean 80 per cent of private property owned by non-black people could be forcibly seized and ownership transferred to the poorer majority black population.

As Trump retaliates, millions of dollars of American humanitarian aid to South Africa are on hold. His tough tariffs on exported goods to the US, including diamonds and minerals, are aimed at curbing

the economic power of the Left-wing African National Congress party (ANC), which heads a coalition government.

The Mail has spoken to many white South Africans hoping to move to America as refugees. Others said, despite the racism they suffer, they will never quit the country where their families have lived for generations.

Nevertheless, there is a mood of fear here, 31 years after the sensational election of Nelson Mandela, the country’s first black president, which ended white supremacy rule for ever.

Mandela’s supremacy ended the cruel apartheid system, which separated blacks and whites at home, work, study and even in sport, by law.

After apartheid came an economic miracle as sanctions against South Africa were lifted. But it didn’t last. The ANC’s hardliners imposed a ruthless black empowerment programme.

White state workers, from energy experts to transport planners, were ordered to re-apply for their jobs. Most never got them back again. In the private sector, black workers got priority, with employers forced to obey rigid hiring quotas according to skin colour. Again, the whites were elbowed out of jobs, particularly in the once-thriving farming sector. In time, this has spelled disaster for all.

Respected South African commentator Andrew Kenny has said: ‘The ANC wrecked everything with their own corruption and a plethora of racist policies.’

Last week, Kenny added of the Expropriation Act: ‘The ANC argues that, like the innumerable race laws it has passed (South Africa now has more of these than it did under apartheid), the legislation is to rectify the historic injustices of white rule.

‘Any private property can be seized without compensation, provided only that it is in the public interest. What does this mean? Well, anything that the ANC wants it to.’

He warned of a rerun of the land reforms by President Robert Mugabe in Zimbabwe two decades ago when thousands of farms, mainly owned by whites, were seized, also taking the jobs of 780,000 black workers and leaving them destitute.

Although the majority of cultivated farmland is owned by whites, who make up just seven per cent of the population, they often struggle to survive, too.

Earlier this month, 1,500 gathered outside the US embassy in the administrative capital Pretoria, holding placards that read: ‘Thank God for President Trump’, ‘Make South Africa Great Again’ and ‘Stop Apartheid Two’.

The protesters handed a memorandum to the embassy pledging support for President Trump and begging the world to ‘recognise and condemn the ANC racial laws’ against them. 

Gunther Jager, in his 20s, spoke for many when he said: ‘I don’t see myself starting a family here in South Africa. I can’t imagine what life would be for the next generation of children. I am looking into selling everything and going to America.’

Others in the crowd included widow Bernadine Botes, 57, and her trainee teacher daughter Monique, 34, who live behind metal fences and are surrounded by alarm systems at their bungalow in Kempton Park, a Johannesburg suburb.

Bernadine moved to the city from Durban after her oldest daughter Chantelle, 20, who had been having a

cigarette in the garden, was dragged from the property, raped and murdered before being left on a railway line.

Bernadine, who is white and part Afrikaans, said: ‘If Monique wants to go to America, I will support her. Our people are afraid every day.’

Also answering the Trump call are Zenia and Ludwich Pretorius, with their children aged nine to 13 and the family’s three cats and two dogs. The couple, aged 36 and 39, gave up their cattle farm in the north of South Africa last year after fences surrounding the property were breached repeatedly by men ‘from the local community’.

‘It was a land grab,’ says Zenia who was born in Italy. ‘We were being driven out.’ After months of harassment, the family put the farm into liquidation and moved to another part of the country. Zenia set up a small business selling candy and Ludwich took a job working for another farmer.

They are excited about America. The Trump offer has given them hope. ‘If leaving South Africa is the price we have to pay for our children’s safety, it is what we will do,’ she added last week.

‘We are waiting to hear how to apply. We will take nothing but five selves and the pets with us. We will start anew.’

After Trump’s rescue package for refugees, a video was posted online vividly illustrating what white farmers are facing. In it a pretty Afrikaans widow called Mariandra Heunis says: ‘I am a survivor of a farm attack. My husband was murdered in cold blood and shot six times in front of my six-year-old daughter. The last shot was in the head. I had to give birth to my fourth child, a son, a few days after his funeral.

‘What would you do if you had to raise four little children alone after your husband was murdered? How would you feel if your foot slipped in the blood on the floorboards of your loved one as you walked through your house? We appeal for help, President Trump.’

South Africa’s ANC president Cyril Ramaphosa has denied that the farm killings (last year saw one every week) are ‘racially motivated’ or provoked by a desire for ‘ethnic cleansing’.

He has insisted they are a ‘sad reminder’ that the country is still recovering from its dark past under apartheid. And there is no doubt that South Africa is nowhere near healed yet.

A sign of the deep race divide came earlier this month when a black South African podcaster called Nota Nhlamulo Baloyi posted an inflammatory video on YouTube. In response to Trump’s offer of refuge, he said: ‘The problem is white people are inferior to us. We are homo sapiens. They are neanderthals, below human beings.

‘Whatever land they are holding on to, their numbers are dwindling. Whatever leadership they had is dying out. They cry: ‘You stole our land; you butcher our people.’ It’s like dealing with a wild dog. They are sub-human.’

All this does not bode well for whites here. In the very centre of South Africa, is the tranquil, independently run town of Orania, established solely for Afrikaners using a loophole in the South African constitution.

Orania was created during the late 1980s, the brainchild of Carel Boshoff, the son-in-law of Hendrik Verwoerd, the man known as the ‘architect of the apartheid system’ when it became law in 1948.

With this dubious history, Orania has been accused — particularly by Left-leaning media in America and the UK — of operating apartheid by the back door. High on a hill outside the town, there are busts of prominent Afrikaner leaders, who Orania leaders say are part of their heritage.

The BBC was refused access when it wanted to take a Strictly Come Dancing competitor, who grew up under apartheid, to make a film clip of life there. And it is extremely picky about residents. ‘It is not an all-white town, but an all-Afrikaner town. We are about culture, not race,’ the chief operating officer Joost Strydom, 31, tells me as he drives me around in a people-carrier that has, he says, carried thousands of visitors to Orania in the past year.

Presidents have been to see the place – including Nelson Mandela – but not the current incumbent. Orania receives no cash from the state, and finances itself partly from the sale of pecan nuts to China. Joost, says the town’s residents have no intention of becoming Trump refugees.

‘I understand why America is doing this,’ he says. ‘I would not try to stop anyone. But none from Orania have shown interest.’ That is not surprising. South Africa has the worst rape rate and the fifth-highest murder tally in the world. In Orania, there’s not even a police force. 

‘Crime is next to nil,’ says Joost. ‘Perhaps an odd mobile phone goes missing; that is all.’ The residents often build their own houses, promoting what Joost says is the ‘Protestant work ethic’ deeply embedded in the Afrikaans culture.

A persistent worry among his community is the land seizures. He thinks that, as a result, Orania will become more popular as Afrikaners apply to live there. It is to expand with two new town squares of shops, promenades and coffee houses.

I stop to speak to Drieke, a 56-year-old riding her electric tricycle along the neat gravel roads towards one of the restaurants overlooking a lake.

‘I came three years ago. My whole life has changed. I feel safe. My one complaint is that the gravel is bumpy for my tricycle.’

There is a college where Afrikaner youth come to learn job skills, including civil engineering, plumbing and early child-care, before seeking apprenticeships. ‘It is a way of building our own futures in South Africa as Afrikaners,’ the students tell us.

Almost all want to set up their own businesses. At the Oppi Dorp (meaning In the Town) pizza bar, 18-year-old Corrie, who is still at school, and Mackenzie, 19, were well aware of Trump’s invitation.

Corrie told us: ‘I see my future in South Africa despite the problems.’ Mackenzie was less sure. She wants to be a psychologist. ‘It’s a small town, Orania,’ she explains, wrinkling her nose. ‘There’s not much for the young, apart from swimming.’

She is one of the lucky Afrikaners. A world away, we find a shanty camp where ‘poor whites’ now live. Near the former gold mining town of Krugersdorp, some 50 families live in tin-roofed shacks next to a steaming rubbish tip and a slag heap left from the pit days. 

These are the forgotten whites — mainly Afrikaners — who were once privileged because of their skin colour. Now, the tables have turned. There are no black servants or brick houses any more. They scrape a living selling scrap metal or caring for elderly relatives. Surely they would go to America?

Not every white South African feels the same – among them many from a younger generation who form most of their views from social media.

‘I don’t approve of Trump,’ says 18-year-old jobless Afrikaner Tristran Kruger as he invites us into his shack near the camp entrance. His grandfather worked as a supermarket manager in the days of apartheid.

‘My dream is to be an ANC activist. Millions of dollars’ worth of property and land, not only the farms, is owned by whites and should be seized for the people.

‘Most of Generation Z feel the same as me, whatever their skin colour.

‘I know of one Afrikaans lady who owns 15 farms and wants to give them to the President as soon as she can. She will lose everything, but thinks it is the right thing to do,’ adds Tristan, who admits that he gets his information from TikTok.

The social media site is riddled with ranting videos from a politician and self-proclaimed Marxist-Leninist ‘freedom fighter’ Julius Malema, who feverishly backs the ANC land grabs from whites.

Malema, an elected South African MP, rules the Economic Freedom Fighters party, which has a strong influence over the ANC and views Communist Cuba as a model for the country.

His signature anthem — which he sings at political rallies — is ‘Kill the Boer’ (a term for white farmers). Worryingly, the country’s human rights court has said that any rendition of the vile song is not a hate crime.

This month, Malema said on TikTok that he would ignore a demand from Elon Musk for his arrest as an international criminal. ‘I won’t be bullied by America,’ he said. ‘I only want the dignity of black people by restoring their land and property.’

Nevertheless, Malema’s racist rhetoric sends a chill through the hearts of Afrikaners like Minnette Claasen, 76, the grandmother of Erik, who is the cattle rancher in America.

The farm of Minnette and her husband Peter, 80, in Grootvlei, an hour’s drive from Johannesburg, was raided in 2000 by four black youths who threw a hammer through a glass door to get into their home, put a knife to Peter’s throat, then shot him with a pistol through his liver, gut and spleen. They left him for dead before stealing £80 from the till at Minnette’s farm shop and were later imprisoned for the crime.

The terrified Claasens sold their thriving farm to a black South African four years later. They have never been back.

Minnette says of her grandson Erik: ‘He is giving his best years to America. There is little future for him as a young man here. Who could blame him for leaving?’