By Nellie Peyton
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) – U.S. President Donald Trump’s attacks on what he alleges is South Africa’s mistreatment of its white minority are being met with mockery on social media by some white South Africans poking fun at their own privilege.
Trump said last week that “certain classes of people” were being treated “very badly” in South Africa, referring to a bill signed by President Cyril Ramaphosa aimed at addressing racial disparities in land ownership.
He then cut aid to South Africa and offered refugee resettlement in the United States to Afrikaners, the descendants of early European settlers, stating they were “victims of unjust racial discrimination”.
“USA, USA, USA!” comedian Bouwer Bosch chants in a TikTok video as he tells a friend he is moving to the United States.
“Why did you get refugee status?” the friend asks.
“Cause I’m white, bro!” he responds, before adding that he will be back to his South African beach house in the summer, to attend a golf tournament and go to AfrikaBurn – South Africa’s answer to the Burning Man festival.
In an Instagram video titled “A day in the life of an oppressed white South African”, a woman lies yawning in bed.
“My husband brought me an iced coffee today because the most oppressive thing about this country is actually the sun,” she says.
South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, who is now a key adviser to Trump, has amplified the president’s attacks on South Africa, writing in a post on his social media platform X last week that the country has “openly racist ownership laws”.
In another Instagram video, South African Indian comedian Sed Pillay plays the character of a white Afrikaner farmer applying for asylum in the United States who doesn’t want to leave behind his Black farm workers.
“I need to put in a special request: if I could please bring Sipho and Thandeka with me,” he says.
South Africa’s Foreign Ministry said on Saturday that Trump’s executive order cutting aid “lacks factual accuracy and fails to recognize South Africa’s profound and painful history of colonialism and apartheid”.
Three decades after the end of racist apartheid rule, white South Africans, who make up less than 10% of the population, still own most of the country’s farmland. Land reform policies since the first multi-racial elections in 1994 have never involved the forced seizure of white-owned land.
The mostly white-led Democratic Alliance party, the top coalition partner in Ramaphosa’s unity government, opposes the recent land bill and has filed a court challenge against it. However the DA also released a statement last week saying it is not true that the act allows land to be seized arbitrarily and that it does require fair compensation.
(Reporting by Nellie Peyton; Editing by Joe Bavier and Frances Kerry)
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