The first group of white South Africans arrived in the US after President Donald Trump granted them refugee status, claiming that a “genocide” is occurring in the African country. 

Trump, whose tycoon ally Elon Musk was born in South Africa, said white farmers were being killed in the country and repeated an allegation of "genocide" that has been widely dismissed as absurd.

Also known as the “Great Replacement” conspiracy theory, it contends that elites in government and business are looking to replace white people with people of colour to create a cheaper workforce. 

The theory also claims that non-white immigrants will take over the populace as they have more children until white people cease to exist.

So, where in the South African context does this hail from? 

Claims of white genocide have been circulating since apartheid ended in the country after 1994. Apartheid, an Afrikaaner word which means “separateness”, was the legalised segregation of races and was in place in South Africa from 1948. 

Mainly Afrikaner-led governments imposed the apartheid system that denied black people political and economic rights until it was voted out in 1994. 

Under apartheid, Black South Africans were subjected to white rule, afflicting Black communities with poverty, disparity and a severe lack of movement, just to name a few. 

The white population, on the other hand, benefited from an economy booming from gold and diamond sales, as it underpaid its non-white labour to scrounge the earth. 

Thirty years after apartheid’s end, unequal access to education, pay disparities and segregated communities still persist. 

Whites, who make up 7.3 percent of the South Africa’s population, generally enjoy a higher standard of living than the black majority. They still own two-thirds of farmland and, on average, earn three times as much as black South Africans.

However, conspiracy theorists allege that white South African farmers are being targeted as part of a system of extermination, linking the claim to land reforms implemented post-apartheid.

South Africa does experience violence against farmers that can turn into murderous attacks. According to research done by AfriForum, a South African non-governmental organisation that focuses on Afrikaners’s interests, attacks on farms have been on the decline from between 2019 to 2022. 

Struggle songs like ‘Dubul’ ibhunu’, which hail from the apartheid-era, have ignited controversy with provocative lyrics like “kill the Boer (descendants of Dutch settlers in South Africa), kill the farmer”. 

Many see such political anthems as a key part of the fight to end white rule over non-whites in South Africa. But billionaire Musk, whose roots are in South Africa, has denounced them as “actively promoting white genocide”. 

The South African government maintains that such violence is not limited to the race of the victim and that farm attacks can affect both black and white farmers alike.

President Cyril Ramaphosa has said he recently told Trump what he is being told about their situation "is not true."

"A refugee is someone who has to leave their country out of fear of political persecution, religious persecution, or economic persecution," Ramaphosa said. "And they don't fit that bill."

But the “Great Replacement” theory has been spun and shared by right-wing journalists like Tucker Carlson and top politicians like US Vice President JD Vance, who said that an immigrant “invasion” would “replace” voters. 

Even ex-US President Theodore Roosevelt in 1903 said that refugees and migrants were too fertile, warning of a “race suicide” if Anglo-Saxons used birth control and could not keep up baby for baby. 

Most recently, a land expropriation law meant to redress inequalities still in place under the former apartheid system ended up inadvertently stoking tension with Washington. Trump has claimed it allows the government "to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners' agricultural property without compensation".

Such “genocide” claims have been picked up and amplified by Afrikaners like Steve Hofmeyr, a singer and activist, or activists from the West, like Lauren Southern, who produced a 2018 documentary called Farmlands, essentially characterising the southern African country as a place where an alleged white genocide occurs. 

Yet there is no evidence that such actions have been occurring in South Africa. 

AfriForum, a South African non-governmental organisation that focuses on Afrikaners’ interests, has refrained from officially alleging that a white genocide is occurring in the country. 

Pauline Bax, African program deputy director for the International Crisis Group, told NewsNations that the persecution of whites is not true. 

“There is no persecution. The fact of the matter is that South Africa had an apartheid system where people who were white dominated politics, they dominated the economy, and even low-skilled white people, mostly Afrikans, who didn’t have many prospects, could easily get a state job. The situation has now changed completely.”

Studies have shown that black farmers only produce less than 10 percent of South Africa’s agricultural output. 

Commercial agriculture is a typically white dominated field, while subsistence farming is mostly composed of black farmers, but this is subject to nuance.