Speaker 1: Already and this is the daily This is the Daily OS.
Speaker 1: Oh now it makes sense. Good morning, and welcome to
Speaker 1: the Daily ODS. It's Tuesday, the twenty seventh of May.
Speaker 2: I'm Lucy Tassel, I'm Zara Zeidler.
Speaker 1: Earlier this month, a group of white South African refugees
Speaker 1: arrived in the US after an executive order by President
Speaker 1: Donald Trump. Trump claims the group are being targeted as
Speaker 1: victims of quote racial discrimination, and has therefore extended refugee
Speaker 1: protection to the group. In today's podcast, we'll explain the
Speaker 1: story behind the headlines and what you need to know
Speaker 1: about the Trump administration's decision to grant refugee status to
Speaker 1: white South Africans.
Speaker 2: Lucy, this is a story that has been flying around
Speaker 2: now for a few weeks, and then last week we
Speaker 2: published a video to TDA Instagram showing US President Donald
Speaker 2: Trump and South African President Cyril Ramafosa arguing in the
Speaker 2: White House.
Speaker 3: White South Africans are fleeing because of the violence and
Speaker 3: racist laws. Look, here's burial sites all over the place.
Speaker 3: They're all these are all white farmers that are being burned.
Speaker 3: And when they killed the white farmer, nothing happens to them. No,
Speaker 3: there is nothing happens.
Speaker 4: There is criminality in our country.
Speaker 1: People who do get killed, unfortunately through criminalibity are not only.
Speaker 4: White people, majority of them black people.
Speaker 2: Now, there's a lot going on here, there's a lot
Speaker 2: of history, there's a lot of context. Can you, I guess,
Speaker 2: start by just explaining more about what Trump specifically is
Speaker 2: alleging is happening in South Africa today.
Speaker 1: Basically as soon as he came to office for the
Speaker 1: second time earlier this year, US President Donald Trump began
Speaker 1: making public statements and shoeing official guidance claiming that white
Speaker 1: South Africans, specifically the ethnic group called Africanas, were having
Speaker 1: their land stolen by the government. He said these people
Speaker 1: would be granted refugee status in the US because they
Speaker 1: were the quote victims of unjust racial discrimination. Then a
Speaker 1: couple of months down the track, so earlier this month,
Speaker 1: fifty nine white South Africans arrived in the US as refugees.
Speaker 1: They're going to be resettled around the country. It's a
Speaker 1: very serious allegation to lay against South Africa, against any country,
Speaker 1: but I think particularly against South Africa, that a group
Speaker 1: of people are being so racially discriminated against that we
Speaker 1: need to extract them.
Speaker 2: And so why is that such a loaded, I guess
Speaker 2: accusation for a country like South Africa.
Speaker 1: Unfortunately I don't have a simple answer. I wish I
Speaker 1: did in order to understand that, we need to take
Speaker 1: a step back in time. So the Netherlands began colonizing
Speaker 1: the region we now know as South Africa in the
Speaker 1: sixteen fifties through the Dutch East India Company. You might
Speaker 1: remember from a couple of weeks ago when we were
Speaker 1: talking about Kashmir, how the British had the British East
Speaker 1: India Company. Same deal, but in the Netherlands, a very
Speaker 1: very powerful company, effectively a state unto itself, with its
Speaker 1: own kind of representatives and just being like incredibly powerful.
Speaker 1: Through trade, through colonization, through slavery, through farming, the Dutch
Speaker 1: took control of the region from its southern tip, the
Speaker 1: Cape of Good Hope. Over time, these Dutch colonizers developed
Speaker 1: into an ethnic minority in the region called Africanas, with
Speaker 1: their own language that was a dialect of Dutch that
Speaker 1: then became its own language called Afrikaans. They also fought
Speaker 1: wars with the British for control of the land during
Speaker 1: this time. Then fast forward again to nineteen fourteen when
Speaker 1: the Afrikaanas founded their own political party, National Party. It
Speaker 1: became a very powerful force. It was aligned against black
Speaker 1: South Africans and against the British, their long term enemies
Speaker 1: in the war for resources and for land. And then
Speaker 1: we'll jump forward one more time to nineteen forty eight.
Speaker 1: The National Party takes power by itself, not in a coalition,
Speaker 1: and it enacted the policy known as apartheid.
Speaker 2: Okay, and apartheid is obviously a huge moment in history,
Speaker 2: in world's history, local pastory. For anyone who's perhaps less
Speaker 2: familiar with this history, can you just give a bit
Speaker 2: of a refresher. What was apartheid?
Speaker 1: Yeah, just broad brush strokes. From nineteen forty eight to
Speaker 1: nineteen ninety four, South Africa separated people based on their race.
Speaker 1: The government passed laws either limiting or outright banning movements, education, jobs, pay,
Speaker 1: and marriage for non white people. This ended after decades
Speaker 1: of peaceful and violent struggles when the party, the African
Speaker 1: National Congress, led by Nelson Mandela, won the country's first
Speaker 1: modern elections. Since then, things have not been completely peaceful
Speaker 1: in South Africa. I think it's easy to understand that
Speaker 1: when you end a system that longstanding and that kind
Speaker 1: of corrosive, you don't just like snap your fingers and
Speaker 1: everything becomes multicultural harmony. The crime rate is fairly high,
Speaker 1: particularly the murder rate, and the economy has definitely struggled
Speaker 1: in South Africa. The latest started though that I looked
Speaker 1: at this week, shows that the rate of murders is
Speaker 1: down in all but one region of South Africa. And
Speaker 1: then just a final note on the kind of state
Speaker 1: of the country in its modern era. White South Africans
Speaker 1: make up around ten percent or less than ten percent
Speaker 1: of the population, but white farmers own around three quarters
Speaker 1: of the country's land.
Speaker 2: And so you've spoken there of land, and land is
Speaker 2: at the center of the claims that Donald Trump is
Speaker 2: now making about modern day South Africa. Specifically, he's claiming,
Speaker 2: as you said, that white South Africans are being targeted
Speaker 2: or murdered and are having their land stolen. Where is
Speaker 2: this claim from US President Donald Trump coming from? What
Speaker 2: is the basis for this claim?
Speaker 1: The land theft aspect is easier to explain to I'll
Speaker 1: start there. South African President Cyril Ramafosa signed a bill
Speaker 1: into law in January which allows the government to redistribute
Speaker 1: land deemed in the public interest. It includes provisions enabling
Speaker 1: land distribution without compensation in very specific cases, such as
Speaker 1: when it's deemed to be abandoned. Following that announcement, Trump
Speaker 1: accused South Africa of quote confiscating land and treating certain
Speaker 1: classes of people very badly, and then soon after that,
Speaker 1: he signed his executive order allowing white South Africans to
Speaker 1: apply for refugee status.
Speaker 2: We'll be back with the rest of today's deep dive
Speaker 2: after a quick message from our sponsor.
Speaker 1: To the other point. As I said, the murder rate
Speaker 1: in South Africa is high. It is true that some
Speaker 1: white farmers make up this statistic. We have official data
Speaker 1: that shows this. However, in February, a South African court
Speaker 1: ruled that claims of genocide against white South Africans were
Speaker 1: quote clearly imagined and not real. Then over the weekend
Speaker 1: we heard from South African Police Minister Senzo mccunu, who
Speaker 1: released new crime data and specifically went out of his
Speaker 1: way to deny Trump's claims.
Speaker 4: It is claimed that his white genocide in South Africa,
Speaker 4: and as evidence, a lot of material has been put
Speaker 4: into circulation all over social media, including in the White
Speaker 4: House in the USA. Now, we have respect for the
Speaker 4: United States of America, and we have respect for the
Speaker 4: President of the United States, but we have no respect
Speaker 4: for his genocide story.
Speaker 1: So the minister said he wasn't going to deny that
Speaker 1: crime levels were high, and he did say there had
Speaker 1: been six attacks on people on farms in rural areas
Speaker 1: in the first three months of this year, but that
Speaker 1: of the six attacks, only one victim was white.
Speaker 2: Okay, So if those are the statistics, where is this
Speaker 2: idea coming from?
Speaker 4: Yeah?
Speaker 1: So, Reuters has reported that the idea of a like
Speaker 1: quote unquote white genocide of farmers in South Africa originated
Speaker 1: as a conspiracy theory in far right chat rooms. Another
Speaker 1: place it has popped up this month is in text
Speaker 1: generated by an AI chatbot on the social media platform X,
Speaker 1: which is owned by Elon Musk, who is himself white
Speaker 1: and from South Africa. I'll say X has called that
Speaker 1: randomly generated text an unauthorized modification that's being fixed. However,
Speaker 1: Musk has publicly suggested that the current government of South
Speaker 1: Africa is perpetrating a genocide against white people, and he
Speaker 1: is also so a close advisor of Donald Trump and
Speaker 1: was in the room when Trump raised these allegations with
Speaker 1: Cyril Ramafosa.
Speaker 2: I want to circle back to this idea of Donald
Speaker 2: Trump making a special executive order to bring white South
Speaker 2: Africans into the country because so much of Donald Trump's
Speaker 2: immigration policy has been about deporting people out of the country. Yeah,
Speaker 2: how can we understand this in the context of the
Speaker 2: Trump administration and Donald Trump's immigration policy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it is definitely different to the other things that
Speaker 1: he has done or has overseen. So you might remember
Speaker 1: that on his first day in office, he signed a
Speaker 1: bunch of executive orders, which are official actions that the
Speaker 1: president can take that circumvent the need to go through
Speaker 1: the Congress, and one of those things was pausing the
Speaker 1: country's refugee program indefinitely. But then he has also opened
Speaker 1: it up to this specific group, and he's also overseen
Speaker 1: the deportation and imprisonment of legal micro pereants and edended
Speaker 1: programs that allowed people without official documentation to live and
Speaker 1: work in the US. So it certainly stands in contrast
Speaker 1: to the remainder of his immigration policy that this very
Speaker 1: select group, so select that it's fewer than sixty people
Speaker 1: so far have been allowed to come in on this
Speaker 1: refugee program. It's certainly interesting to see how that squares
Speaker 1: with the rest of his documented policy, and I guess
Speaker 1: it remains to be seen how many more people will
Speaker 1: be given this opportunity to come to the US, and
Speaker 1: given that they've come, I suppose from rural South African
Speaker 1: farming communities, what their life is going to look like
Speaker 1: once they're settled in the US.
Speaker 2: Lucie, thank you so much for explaining the story behind
Speaker 2: the headlines that I know so many of our audience
Speaker 2: will have seen, and thank you for joining us for
Speaker 2: another day of the Daily Ours. We'll of course be
Speaker 2: back later today with the headlines, but until then, have
Speaker 2: a great day.
Speaker 1: My name is Lily Maddon and I'm a proud at
Speaker 1: a udah Banjelung Kalkadin woman from Gadighl country. The Daily
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Speaker 1: of the Gadighl people and pays respect to all Aboriginal
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Speaker 1: to the first peoples of these countries, both past and present.