A farm in South Africa is entirely dedicated to white people (Getty Images)
Washington has allocated a budget of nearly $335,000 to carry out a marketing and reconnaissance campaign inside South Africa, with the aim of solving the mystery of the reluctance of the "Afrikaans" group — of European origin — to apply for the asylum program assigned to them.
Afrasianet - Ali Murtada - Behind the scenes of the U.S. State Department, planners were facing a critical predicament revealed by a leaked secret document reported by the British press through The Guardian, as Washington considers allocating a budget of nearly $335,000 to carry out a marketing and reconnaissance campaign inside South Africa.
The story begins with a paradox imbued with political irony: a superpower like the United States opens its doors of asylum and prepares to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars on a propaganda campaign funded to persuade an ethnic group to flee the "hell of its country," but almost no one knocks on the door, and those who knock on it out of curiosity or greed for a quick green card find a dry diplomatic edict waiting for them that closes the door to them once and for all, without the right to appeal.
This scene is not the plot of a political narrative, but rather the essence of the heated diplomatic scene between Washington and Pretoria over the U.S. Refugee Resettlement Program (USRAP).
Behind the scenes of the US State Department, the planners were facing a critical dilemma revealed by a leaked secret document carried by the British press through The Guardian, as Washington is considering allocating a budget of nearly $335,000 to carry out a marketing and reconnaissance campaign inside South Africa, with the aim of solving the mystery of the reluctance of the Afrikaans to apply for their asylum program.
While American right-wing platforms and President Donald Trump's rhetoric promoted the idea that white South Africans were living under the weight of a "systematic state-sponsored genocide," the reality on the ground dealt a severe blow to that narrative: the low application numbers were not just an indication of a fleeting lethargy, but the compelling practical evidence that torpedoed the rationale for the entire political propaganda: people facing real extermination and purges need no Afrikaans-language $6 million commercials or propaganda campaigns to convince them to save their lives.
The U.S. Embassy in Pretoria issued crucial warnings on its official platforms warning that applying for the program never means guaranteeing admission, and that refusal decisions issued by USCIS officers are final and not appealable.
The "white genocide" narrative was nothing more than a commodity promoted by far-right lobbyists in South Africa such as AfriForum, and resonated widely in Washington for its use in immigration battles and domestic politics, and the narrative leaned on incidents of violence and robberies in rural areas (farm attacks) and on bills to amend the constitution to reform land without compensation.
But Pretoria's response was calm, precise and supported by the language of facts and figures, with its foreign minister, Ronald Lamolla, asserting that the country was free of any genocidal practices. Crime in South Africa is not about the colour of the skin; it is a crisis of communal violence and structural poverty that grinds the vast majority of black citizens in towns and slums at rates that are exponentially greater than farm accidents.
Land laws are a slow and deliberate attempt to correct the legacy of apartheid, which confiscated 87 percent of land in favor of settlers under a 1913 law, and is still subject to the oversight of independent constitutional courts that have not allowed any arbitrary expropriation.
What makes the idea of "Afrikaans asylum" ridiculous in South Africa is the nature of the economic and social balances: the white minority, which makes up only about 7 to 8 percent of the population, does not live in shelters or displacement camps, but sits at the top of the economic pyramid:
Land monopoly: According to reports by the South African Farmers' Federation (Agri SA), farmers and white companies own more than 70% of high-yield commercial farmland destined for global and domestic markets.
Money Empires: Afrikaans Capital and its Subsidiaries Dominate Vital Joints on the Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE), banking, insurance, gold and metal mines.
Parallel institutions: This minority has established for itself giant independent unions such as Solidarity, private universities and schools, and investment and insurance funds make them completely dispensed with many of the state's dilapidated services.
In the heart of power: Politically, they are no longer an excluded minority; since the formation of the "Government of National Unity"» (GNU)The Democratic Alliance» (DA) The Freedom Front Plus» (Freedom Front Plus) — The historic representatives of whites and Afrikaans — running sovereign ministries and having the effective veto power over any legislation that threatens private property or the open market.
Thus, without the need for study centers, the full picture is clear: citizens who own the land, run major corporations, and sit in the seats of ministers, while Washington looks for propaganda tricks to convince them that they are victims of genocide in need of resettlement, so that the conspiracy theory will be brought down before the court of reality..
