CAPE TOWN, South Africa (AP) — U.S. President Donald Trump has expanded the number of refugee places available for white South Africans, saying there have been “recent increases in the incitement of racially motivated violence” against them by their Black-led government and other political parties.It’s not clear what incitement Trump was referring to when his administration made the announcement Tuesday of 10,000 additional places for white South Africans in the refugee program this year to raise it to 17,500.It’s Trump’s latest contention that minority white Afrikaners are being persecuted, which the South African government denies.Here’s a look at what Trump says is happening to white people in South Africa to justify their resettlement and why his position that they are being persecuted is condemned as baseless:
Attacks on farmersTrump laid the foundation for the resettlement of Afrikaners in an executive order last year that said they were victims of racial violence fueled by government actions.Afrikaners are white South Africans descended from mainly Dutch and French settlers who first came to South Africa in the 1600s. The U.S. has cited a small number of home attacks on white farmers as evidence of racial persecution. The South African government and analysts say that’s a distortion of the facts, because Black farmers and farmworkers are also killed and injured in what are largely violent robberies and not racial attacks.
