Donald Trump’s decision to take in more so-called “refugees” from South Africa is being framed as a fundamentally ― or perhaps fundamentalist ― MAGA story. But behind the Trump hoopla this remains a depressingly South African tale: white people playing the snow-white race card to get an economic leg up they couldn’t get by themselves.
This week, the Trump administration announced that it will now accept an additional 10,000 white Afrikaners, an increase based on “grave humanitarian concerns”, concerns which exist only in feverish PowerPoint presentations put together by American white nationalist consultants and presented to Trump as a solid way to whip the MAGA base into fresh ecstasies of Swart Gevaar nativism.
This new exodus, should it materialise, will join nearly 6,500 former compatriots who have already trickled over to the US since Trump first invited white South Africans to be his useful idiots back in May last year.
Some things remains unclear. We don’t know, for example, how many more whites still want to leave, or how the ones who’ve already gone are settling in, or how soon Mel and Peet will start referring to themselves either as refugees or political prisoners.
Must confusing, though, is why otherwise respectable South African journalists and news sources have started referring to these people as refugees without adding very large, very eye-rolling quote marks around “refugee”.
Even when articles are critical of Trump’s programme and the grubby motives behind it, they persist in using the word without qualification or irony, giving their journalistic stamp of approval to the absurd claim that these emigrants are fleeing genuine persecution in South Africa.
Of course, I know that reporters aren’t allowed to editorialise: someone reporting on the emigres for, say, News24, is not professionally allowed to add their personal opinion into the report, and perhaps they think that putting “refugees” in quote marks crosses that line.
But if I might remind those reporters of the words of journalism professor Jonathan Foster: “If someone tells you it’s raining and another tells you it’s dry, it’s not your job to quote them both. It’s your job to look out the f***ing window and find out which is true.”
If you want to be generous, you might call them pragmatists or economic migrants. If you want to be less kind, you could call them beneficiaries of apartheid playing the race card to skip out on the mess their parents and grandparents helped create.
In South Africa’s case, it is clearly the duty of journalists to report that these people are not refugees. That much is clear from the details of their own reporting: if it’s taken a full year for just 0.26% of an allegedly persecuted community to leave, despite that community being offered a magic carpet ride to the richest country in the world, with no restrictions placed on their ability to sell their assets and leave by the country they’re apparently fleeing, you don’t need a journalism degree to understand that that community is not being persecuted, and is certainly not facing any of the violence, deprivation or abuse by the state that might make them legitimate refugees.
So, because some of my colleagues in the media apparently aren’t allowed to say that these are not real refugees, let me say it for them.
The white Afrikaners heading Stateside are not fleeing persecution, because persecution implies torment aimed specifically and solely at them, and none of the hardships they have experienced, whether violent crime or economic hardship, are the preserve of white people in South Africa. On the contrary, white people are on average far safer and richer than their black compatriots.
This is not to say some of the emigres haven’t experienced terrible things or tough times that have traumatised and embittered them. But everything they’ve suffered is also being suffered by black South Africans. The only difference is that black South Africans are not allowed to apply for fake refugee status, because they are black.
I can understand why the emigres are going. If things feel grim here for them, and they’ve convinced themselves that they are, in fact, victims, it’s a no-brainer for them to take the gap into a rich, safe country.
If you want to be generous, you might call them pragmatists or economic migrants. If you want to be less kind, you could call them beneficiaries of apartheid playing the race card to skip out on the mess their parents and grandparents helped create.
But whatever you call them, don’t call them refugees, because when you do so, without ironic quote marks, you’re not only validating the racist fantasies of Donald Trump and his South African supporters: you’re also revealing your belief that bad things happening to white people is a humanitarian crisis that demands international intervention, but the same or worse things happening to black people in the same country doesn’t require any action at all.
You are saying the white lives are more valuable than black ones. And that makes you a racist. Without quote marks.
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