The first 49 white South Africans granted refugee status for being deemed victims of racial discrimination under an offer by US President Donald Trump were flying to the US yesterday.
Under Trump, Washington has blocked mostly non-white refugee admissions from the rest of the world but is prioritising Afrikaners, the descendants of mostly Dutch settlers.
Treating white South Africans as refugees fleeing oppression has drawn a mixture of alarm and ridicule by South African authorities, who say the Trump administration has waded into a domestic issue it does not understand.
South African media, too, have shown little sympathy for the asylum seekers, with many keeping them off front pages and calling them “refugees” in quotation marks.
The charter plane carrying the 49 from Johannesburg was due into Washington Dulles airport at around 12:30 (1630 GMT).
People familiar with the matter said the South Africans would participate in a Press conference before boarding flights to different US destinations.
Some were heading to Democratic-leaning Minnesota, which has a reputation for welcoming refugees, while others planned to go to Republican-led states such as Idaho and Alabama, sources said.
South Africa maintains there is no evidence of persecution.
Speaking at a conference in Ivory Coast, President Cyril Ramaphosa said the white South Africans had ostensibly left because they were opposed to policies aimed at addressing racial inequality persisting since apartheid.
“We think that the American government has got the wrong end of the stick here, but we’ll continue talking to them,” he said.
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