White South Africans, known as Afrikaners, are coming to the United States under a new refugee program. Mostly farmers, they are claiming racial persecution and violence on their farms. But South African President Cyril Ramaphosa denounced those claims in a recent visit to the White House.
KAZU’s Ngozi Cole spoke to Jessica Piombo, associate professor of U.S. foreign policy and African politics at the Naval Postgraduate School, about the current relationship between the U.S. and South Africa. Piombo says South Africa is a very complex country with a deep history of racial discrimination.
The following conversation was edited for length and clarity.
Ngozi Cole: Can you provide some background about the Afrikaners’ claims of racial persecution?
Jessica Piombo: The [1913 Natives Land Act] placed the majority of Black South Africans onto, literally, reserves and turned into the Apartheid system after the National Party won the control of Parliament in 1948. It created a hierarchy of racial segregation across all aspects of society, which included education and occupation. Black South Africans were put into lower occupational strata. They were maids, farm workers, not farm owners. They were given vocational education and not university education. University education was reserved for white South Africans.
NC: Fast forward to the end of apartheid in 1994, South Africa introduced programs like land redistribution and employment opportunities for Black people.
JP: The Afrikaners definitely feel like their position in society has been downgraded. They feel like they are not able to get jobs because of all the what they call Black Employment Equity Programs. And so they develop a narrative of persecution and a narrative that they are being targeted. And the data doesn't necessarily support the narrative. Today, if there's an annual average of 27,000 murders in South Africa per year, less than 1% of that is farm deaths. And farm deaths don't mean farmer deaths. Farm deaths means killings on farms, which could be the farm workers and Black smallholders, who have very small plots of land.
NC: How will these allegations against the South African government affect trade relations between the U.S. and South Africa?
JP: South Africa is an AGOA (African Growth and Opportunity Act) eligible country. AGOA was created under Bill Clinton as a program of duty-free trade. So African countries who are eligible can export their goods to the United States duty- free. South Africa's trade profile by far outpaces every other African exporter to the United States, outside of the petroleum countries like Angola and Nigeria. U.S. exports to South Africa in 2024 were $5.8 billion and our imports were $14.7 billion. So this trade relationship is very robust and this is not the typical relationship you see with African countries, which are mostly primary commodities. South Africa exports passenger vehicles, vehicle parts and agricultural products like boxed juice and wine.
NC: And what will be the implications of U.S. tariffs for South Africa, and maybe even for the U.S.?
JP: Anything from South Africa that's being exported is coming in at a lower price point. Their transit lines through the Atlantic are not as long as sea lanes from Asia. The tariffs are going to increase the prices of the manufactured exports until we're able to produce locally, but even the locally-produced products are still going to be at a higher price point than what we could have imported.
Jessica Piombo is a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School in Monterey.
These views are her own and not official positions of the Naval Postgraduate School.
