(AFP) – South Africa arrested and expelled seven Kenyans who had been working illegally on a US government programme to accept white Afrikaners as “refugees,” the government said Wednesday. President Donald Trump’s administration in May offered refugee status to the minority white Afrikaner community, claiming they were victims of discrimination and even “genocide,” which the Pretoria government strongly denies.
The United States engaged Kenyans from a Christian NGO based in Kenya to come to South Africa to fast-track the processing of applications for resettlement under the programme. South African authorities raided an application centre on Tuesday after intelligence that “a number of Kenyan nationals had recently entered South Africa on tourist visas and had illegally taken up work processing the applications of so-called ‘refugees’ to the United States,” the home affairs ministry said.
“During the operation, seven Kenyan nationals were discovered engaging in work despite only being in possession of tourist visas, in clear violation of their conditions of entry into the country,” it said in a statement. They were arrested and issued with deportation orders, it said. Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber said later Wednesday all seven had “self-deported” after signing an acknowledgement of the deportation orders, his office said. “They have thus now all left the country and are prohibited from re-entering South Africa for a period of five years, after violating the terms of their tourist visas by performing work,” he said.
— US decries ‘interference’ – In the United States, Trump has seized on technical violations of visa conditions as a way to carry out mass deportations of foreigners, mostly from developing countries. US State Department lawyers had believed that the Kenyans had the right to work temporarily, according to a person familiar with the episode.
“We have worked to operate the refugee program within the confines of the law, and South Africa has pledged on multiple occasions not to interfere in our operations — unfortunately, we have now seen interference,” a Trump administration official said. The Trump administration in October announced plans to take in 7,500 refugees in fiscal 2026, with most places going to white Afrikaners, a community largely descended from Dutch settlers who arrived in South Africa more than 350 years ago.
It has repeatedly claimed that Afrikaners are being persecuted since the end of white minority rule in 1994, citing attacks on their farms and requirements for black representation in business. Pretoria firmly rejects the allegations, pointing out that black South Africans are the main victims of the country’s high crime rate and that economic empowerment laws are intended to redress stark inequalities inherited from apartheid.
A first group of around 50 Afrikaners was flown to the United States for resettlement in May. Others have reportedly followed in smaller numbers. The South African home affairs department said no US officials were arrested in Tuesday’s raid, which was not conducted at a diplomatic site. No prospective “refugees” were harassed, it said, adding that the government had contacted US and Kenyan officials over the issue.
US resettlement processing in South Africa is carried out by the Resettlement Support Center (RSC) Africa operated by the US-based Church World Service. The South African home affairs department said “foreign officials” were apparently coordinating with the undocumented workers, which “raises serious questions about intent and diplomatic protocol.”
Ties between the two countries have plummeted since Trump took office, with his administration lashing out at South Africa over a range of policies, expelling its ambassador in March and imposing 30-percent trade tariffs. The fallout led Washington to boycott South Africa’s summit of the G20 group of leading economies in November. The United States took over the rotating year-long G20 presidency this month and has said South Africa would not be invited to events that it hosts.
© 2024 AFP
