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For decades, some members of the white Afrikaner minority have been trying to convince anyone and everyone who would listen that they are the true victims in post-apartheid South Africa.<\/p>\n
They have made claims of mass killings of their people and widespread land grabs by a Black-led government that they insist is seeking retribution for the sins of the Afrikaner-led apartheid government. Their stories have been false or greatly exaggerated<\/a>, but that hasn\u2019t stopped them from being widely amplified and repeated online.<\/p>\n Afrikaners, an ethnic group that descended from European \u2014 primarily Dutch \u2014 colonizers, have found a champion of their cause in President Trump, and it has led to a moment that few of them could have imagined.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump on Friday put the weight of American influence behind a hotly disputed claim that Afrikaners were the \u201cvictims of unjust racial discrimination,\u201d issuing an executive order<\/a> to allow them to migrate to the United States as refugees, and halting aid to South Africa.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n The move was met with dismay in South Africa, a majority-Black nation where more than 90 percent of the population comes from racial groups persecuted by the racist, apartheid regime. These groups \u2014 Black, Colored and Indian \u2014 remain statistically far behind the white minority in virtually every economic measure.<\/p>\n There have been gruesome murders of white farmers, the focus of the Afrikaner grievances, but police statistics suggest that they account for a very small share of the country\u2019s killings.<\/p>\n It is not clear whether Mr. Trump\u2019s interest in South Africa has been influenced by Elon Musk, now one of his close advisers, who was born and raised there and has been harshly critical of its government.<\/p>\n For Afrikaners, who make up about 4 percent of the population, Mr. Trump\u2019s action was the culmination of years of international lobbying.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n \u201cWhat happened last night is probably the most significant international action\u201d on South Africa since 1994, when the apartheid regime lost power, Ernst Roets, the executive director of the Afrikaner Foundation, an advocacy group, said on Saturday.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Roets has made several trips to Washington over the years to meet with lawmakers and think tanks, and has another long-planned trip coming up in two weeks, he said. His organization has not met with any officials in the second Trump administration and was not directly involved in the executive order, he said. But they have spoken with people in Mr. Trump\u2019s orbit and have raised international awareness for their cause, he said.<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019ve done some things wrong, but every community has done some things wrong,\u201d Mr. Roets said of Afrikaners. \u201cWe\u2019ve had this sense of being scapegoated and blamed for everything. The fact that there\u2019s now a recognition is something that I think a lot of people will welcome.\u201d<\/p>\n South African government officials were somewhat blindsided by Mr. Trump\u2019s order, learning of it through news reports, said Ebrahim Rasool, South Africa\u2019s ambassador in Washington.<\/p>\n Mr. Trump began focusing publicly on South Africa last Sunday, with posts on social media and comments to reporters, suggesting that the country\u2019s government was seizing white-owned land.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa last month signed a law that allows the government to take private land, in limited circumstances, without compensating the owners. But legal scholars say such seizures are subject to judicial scrutiny and in most cases the government will compensate owners for land it acquires for public purposes.<\/p>\n Supporters of the law say it is needed in part to redress the imbalance created by a history of white people taking control of most land, while Black ownership was limited by force and by law.<\/p>\n After Mr. Trump made his comments, Mr. Musk asked Mr. Ramaphosa in a post on X, \u201cWhy do you have openly racist ownership laws?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Vincent Magwenya, a spokesman for Mr. Ramaphosa, said, \u201cwe have never witnessed such an escalation of diplomatic tensions,\u201d and added that the issues Mr. Trump raised had \u201cbeen laced with complete lies and distortions about our country.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n Mr. Ramaphosa spoke with Mr. Musk this past week and was \u201cemphatic in saying we don\u2019t have racist laws,\u201d Mr. Magwenya said. But Mr. Musk has continued to insist<\/a> that white people in South Africa are persecuted.<\/p>\n