The South African government has criticized the US's decision to prioritize refugee applications from white Afrikaners, saying claims of a white genocide have been widely discredited and lack reliable evidence.
It highlighted an open letter published by prominent members of the Afrikaner community earlier this week rejecting the narrative, with some signatories calling the relocation scheme racist.
The limited number of white South African Afrikaners signing up to relocate to the US was an indication that they were not being persecuted, it added.
On Thursday, the administration of US President Donald Trump announced its lowest refugee annual cap on record - to just 7,500.
The exact figures regarding the number of white South Africans admitted through the US scheme are not available. South Africa's latest crime statistics do not indicate that more white people have fallen victim to violent crime than other racial groups.
Earlier in the year, President Trump offered refugee status to Afrikaners—descendants of Dutch and French settlers—after South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a law allowing for government seizure of land without compensation in certain instances.
Most private farmland is owned by white South Africans, who make up just over 7% of the population. Several months ago, South Africa's ambassador to Washington, Ebrahim Rasool, was expelled after accusing Trump of 'mobilising a supremacism' and trying to 'project white victimhood as a dog whistle.'
In the Oval Office in May, Trump confronted President Ramsphosa and claimed white farmers in South Africa were being killed and 'persecuted.' He held up an image purporting to show body bags of white victims from South Africa, which later turned out to be misidentified footage from the Democratic Republic of Congo.
The White House did not comment on the claims of misidentification of the image, nor did it address footage shown that were purportedly burial sites for murdered white farmers but later emerged as part of a protest in 2020.
