Chief Rabbi criticises Trump refugee stance on white Afrikaners

The Trump administration’s policy to focus on white Afrikaners by offering them refugee status in the US and now legislating the issue is not different to the ANC approach to see matters as a conflict between blacks and whites.

This is the view of Chief Rabbi Warren Goldstein, who was commenting on the recent decision by US President Donald Trump to offer refugee status to Afrikaners, alleging their rights were being violated in South Africa.

Trump also cited land expropriation, further alleging the grabbing of land belonging to Afrikaner farmers and genocide of white people.

However, this was universally rejected by South Africans, including the government and the majority of Afrikaners themselves, who dissociated themselves from the disinformation fed to Trump by organisations like AfriForum and Solidarity.

Trump ‘playing into the hands of ANC’

“The Trump administration’s policy falls into the same trap as the ANC does – understanding South Africa as a conflict between black and white,” Goldstein said.

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“By making this about race, the Trump administration plays into the hands of the ANC, who are most comfortable in fighting on that terrain but who would have been wrong-footed had Trump made the issue about values.

“We need to move beyond the politics of race and toward the politics of shared values.”

He said black and white South Africans share common ground on the basic values of faith in God, family, hard work, decency, respect and rule of law.

Shared struggles and values

“South Africa is essentially a moderate, centre-right, conservative society where most people share many of the values that are common to Trump’s own supporters in America” he said.

Goldstein condemned the media for “peddling false news” about South Africa that the Land Act held no threat and that farmers were not disproportionately targeted by violent attacks.

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“Black and white South Africans share common values and are jointly victims of civil rights abuses of their government,” he said.

On property rights, he acknowledged that whites held the bulk of the privately owned land in South Africa and faced risks from the country’s new expropriation laws, but there were already millions of black South Africans who were denied title deeds to the properties they occupied.

Black farmers also facing attacks

Research showed that across the fertile east of the country, many blacks may be holding more than half of the best agricultural land by value, but were denied formal rights to that land.

He said black commercial farmers were facing attacks at the same rate, if not greater, than their white counterparts on their land, while thousands of black smallholders faced terrible rates of stock theft and looting that bankrupted their small businesses.

But they faced violent retribution if they spoke out, he added. Goldstein believed that Trump’s approach was misinformed about the real situation in South Africa.

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