Trump’s Afrikaner ‘refugees’ pitch a piece of theatre

Three decades after the end of apartheid the average white South African still has 20 times the wealth of the average Black South African.

Afrikaners aren’t actually refugees. They are bit-players in a secular passion play staged by U.S. President Donald Trump, right, probably at the suggestion of his faithful side-kick Elon Musk, left, who grew up very rich in apartheid-era South Africa, writes Gwynne Dyer. Photograph courtesy of the White House/Flickr

Opinion

BY GWYNNE DYER

May 14, 2025

LONDON, U.K.—As my flight landed in South Africa on May 11, I looked in vain for the plane that was due to take off with the first 49 of the many thousands of white, Afrikaans-speaking “refugees” who are supposedly going to find safety from racist persecution in Presid...

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