Trump and his minions have a special beef with South Africa, evidently. Earlier this year, they raised a huge scandal about Afrikaans-speaking white farmers being “massacred” with the connivance of the government of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who heads the African National Congress, or ANC party.
Never mind that not just Ramaphosa, but conservative, white, and Afrikaans-speaking members of his own coalition cabinet, such as Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen, have responded that the Trump accusations are inaccurate, that South Africa does have a high crime rate but that Afrikaners are not being targeted for mass murder. Progressive Afrikaners have also indignantly denied the Trump accusations.
But Trump and his gang do not let up in these situations. Now there is another blow up. A new batch of supposed “Afrikaner refugees” have been approved for admission to the United States, with no objections from the South African government. This is in addition to 50 or so who were enticed to come to the U.S. this past spring.
The Kenya-based office of Church World Service, a U.S. organization, is in charge of processing the new batch. But on Dec.16, South African Home Affairs officials and police raided the location in Johannesburg where the processing of the so-called “Afrikaner refugees” was to take place and arrested seven Kenyan workers there as undocumented immigrants.
According to the South African press, the United States had previously asked South Africa to approve 30 visas for Kenyan citizens to act as “volunteers” to process the “refugee” applications at the Johannesburg center, but South Africa turned down the request.
Apparently, they came anyway. South Africa now accuses the seven who were working in Johannesburg of being unauthorized immigrants who were, in fact, getting paid for the work—hence the immigration raid.
As it happens, “illegal immigration” from other African countries is a big issue in South Africa right now. Since the end of apartheid, there have been attacks and even riots against foreigners, mostly poor people from other African countries, including, ironically, Somalia.
There is an organized, militant movement in some areas to forcefully expel such migrants, or at least to stop them from using South African health care and other social services. This movement, called “Operation Dudula,” has been harassing the migrants, and the South African government has been trying to stop it.
But South Africa currently has a very broad coalition government, and the ANC has to share governance with some right-wing parties who have xenophobic attitudes. So, for the United States, whose actions toward South Africa during the Trump administration have been hostile, to pull this stunt is deeply offensive and even dangerous.
This is the same President Trump who has been absolutely merciless toward undocumented immigrants in his own country and is even threatening documented immigrants and naturalized citizens.
An administration so obsessed with “illegals, illegals, illegals” is now apparently engineering undocumented immigration inside Africa as an instrument to destabilize a state that dares to chart its own path and not follow U.S. dictates.
We would ask if the irony of the situation is lost on Trump, but blatant hypocrisy in pursuit of imperial interests is almost always a suitable enough explanation when it comes to his government.
As with all op-eds published by People’s World, the views reflected here are those of the author.
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