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Trump and Musk meeting with South Africa’s president at White House amid tense relations

President Trump is meeting with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa at the White House on Wednesday, with South African-born billionaire Elon Musk present, for a critical conversation amid tensions between the U.S. and South Africa.

A White House official confirmed Musk will join the meeting with the two world leaders, as Mr. Trump echoes Musk’s claim that genocide is being committed against White Afrikaners. 

The U.S. accepted 59 White Afrikaners last week, granting them status as refugees. Mr. Trump has repeatedly said White farmers in South Africa have been targets of “genocide” — an allegation South Africa has rejected — and insists South Africa is “out of control.”

The South African government denies that White Afrikaners have faced racial discrimination. And Ramaphosa has deemed the individuals “cowards” for resettling in the U.S. 

Ramaphosa’s office said the White House meeting, set to begin at 11:30 a.m. ET, will offer a “platform to reset the strategic relationship between the two countries.” Mr. Trump has levied new tariffs on South Africa, as he has virtually everywhere else. 

Afrikaners are White South Africans of Dutch descent who have lived in South Africa for four centuries. In addition to English, Afrikaners have their own language, Afrikaans, which has its roots in Dutch and is one of 12 official languages of South Africa. 

The expedited process for the Afrikaners comes as the Trump administration is working to suspend the refugee admission program, drawing multiple court challenges.

In a tense exchange during a hearing on Capitol Hill Tuesday on budget matters, Democratic Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio if the Afrikaners are more persecuted than the Uyghurs or Rohingyas, or dissidents in Cuba, Venezuela or Nicaragua, or than those who would be threatened by the Taliban, should they return to Afghanistan.

Kaine suggested the Trump administration is giving preference to Afrikaners due to the color of their skin, and asked Rubio why the U.S. should prioritize Afrikaners. Rubio said the Afrikaners are a “small subset.” 

“It’s a new issue,” Rubio said. “And the president identified it as a problem and wanted to use it as an example. But that’s different from having these refugee programs that were basically spending money to put people up in communities and accommodate them, and it was acting as a magnet.”

“Let me challenge you, and I’m just going to say for the public, if you want to understand about the quote, persecution, of Afrikaner farmers, go look at the composition of the South African government,” Kaine responded. “Since July of 2024, there’s a government of national unity. And the opposition party today — the ANC — the Afrikaner Party, the Democracy Alliance, is part of the governing coalition. They joined the governing coalition a year ago, and the leader of that party was given the remit of Agriculture Minister Jan Steenhuisen, and he is the leader of the former Afrikaner party, still widely representing Afrikaners. He is the minister of agriculture in South Africa right now. I assert that this claim that there’s persecution of Afrikaner farmers is completely specious.”

Kathryn Watson

Kathryn Watson is a politics reporter for CBS News Digital, based in Washington, D.C.

Caroline Linton and

Sara Cook

contributed to this report.

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Rubio to Sen. Kaine on Afrikaners: ‘You Don’t Like That They’re White’

Secretary of State Marco Rubio clashed with Democrats over the Trump administration’s recent acceptance of South African refugees, telling Sen. Tim Kaine (D-VA) that he does not “like the fact that they’re white” in a Tuesday exchange.

The heated conversation took place during a Senate Foreign Relations Committee hearing, with Kaine calling the State Department’s claims of “government-sponsored racial discrimination” against the minority Afrikaner population “specious.”

Implying that the U.S. government has given Afrikaners preferential treatment to become legal refugees due to their race, Kaine asked, “Can you have a different standard based upon the color of somebody’s skin? Would that be acceptable?”

“I’m not the one arguing that, apparently you are because you don’t like the fact that they’re white and that’s why they’re coming,” Rubio shot back:

 

“The United States has a right to pick and choose who they allow into the United States,” the secretary continued, before being interrupted by the senator. 

“Based on the color of somebody’s skin?” Kaine again pressed. 

Rubio replied, “You’re the one that’s talking about the color of their skin, not me. These are people whose farms were burned down and they were killed because of the color of their skin.”

The spat stemmed from less than 60 white South African refugees touching down in the United States on May 12, with President Donald Trump condemning the “genocide that’s taking place” against them.

Deputy Secretary of State Christopher Landau welcomed the group, which included families with young children, at Dulles International Airport, decrying the “unjust racial discrimination” and “violence” they faced in their home country.

“They were really subject to very serious, egregious, and targeted threats, and we wish them well in their journey in the United States,” Landau told Breitbart News at the time. “We underscored for them that the American people are a welcoming and generous people, and we underscore the importance of assimilation into the United States, which is one of the very important factors that we look to in refugee admissions and through this resettlement program for these folks who were vetted in South Africa.”

Kaine continued in his remarks on Tuesday, “Now we’re creating a special pathway for white Afrikaner farmers in a country governed by a unity government that includes the Afrikaner parties.”

“Would you agree, Mr. Secretary, that if we’re interpreting the phrase ‘a well-founded fear of persecution’, we should apply that standard evenhandedly?”

Rubio responded, “I think we should apply it in the national security interest of the United States.”

“The United States has the right to choose who it allows in and to prioritize that choice,” he added.

“And should that be applied evenhandedly?” Kaine asked, to which Rubio replied, “Our foreign policy does not require evenhandedness.”

Sen. Chris Van Hollen, the Maryland Democrat who led the charge to El Salvador to advocate for accused MS-13 gang member and alleged wife-beater Kilmar Abrego Garcia, also had some angry words for Rubio during the hearing.

“I regret voting for you,” Van Hollen told the secretary, who was unanimously confirmed by the Senate in January. 

“Your regret for voting for me confirms I’m doing a good job,” Rubio responded:

Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram. 



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8 people shot dead in a bar found

Police in South Africa launched a manhunt on Saturday for gunmen who killed eight customers at a tavern in the southeastern city of Durban.

The attack late on Friday evening was the latest mass shooting in the crime-weary African nation that has one of the world’s highest murder rates.

The incident unfolded when an unknown number of gunmen entered the bar in Umlazi township and opened fire, police said.

First responders found the eight dead people “lying in a pool of blood with multiple gunshot wounds”, police said in a statement, adding that two of them were women.

The victims were aged between 22 and 40 years old, police said.

“Investigations into the possible motive of the killings are underway,” they said.

Shootings are common in South Africa, often fueled by gang violence and alcohol.

Many people own licensed firearms for personal protection, yet there are many more illegal guns in circulation.      

There are around 75 murders a day in South Africa, according to police data.

According to the most recent government crime statistics,  6,953 people were murdered in the country from October 2024 to December 2024.

Sometimes entire families are targeted. Last September, gunmen shot dead seven members of the same family, including three children, in an execution-style killing in their home in a rural part of the country. In 2013, 10 members of the same family — including a 13-year-old — were killed in a mass shooting at their house in South Africa.

Sometimes, more high-profile people are targeted. Last month, gunmen in South Africa abducted a U.S. missionary from his church as he was delivering a sermon. Pastor Josh Sullivan was later rescued during a shootout between police and his captors that left three suspects dead.

In April 2024, soccer star Luke Fleurs was gunned down as he refilled his car at a gas station in South Africa. Six suspects were arrested.

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Episcopal Bishop: We Aren’t Helping Afrikaners Because They ‘Jumped the Line’

On Wednesday’s broadcast of CNN’s “AC360,” Episcopal Church Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe defended the church’s migration service refusing to resettle new migrants from South Africa and stated that “if you look at this decision, this is really about people who have jumped the line.”

Rowe said, “[L]ook at the thousands of people fleeing war and violence, people who are waking up dead around the world, people who have helped our military that are being left in camps on a daily basis while white Afrikaners have been fast-tracked. You’re right. It is about need. And if you look at this decision, this is really about people who have jumped the line. When you look at the fact that the entire refugee resettlement program in the United States has been totally gutted, that almost no refugees have been admitted since January, and the only ones that are being admitted are white Afrikaners, I don’t know what that says, but we can’t be a part of that.”

He added, “We had people waiting on airplanes. We had people who have helped our country, that have been translators for our military, that have been patriots for this country that are waiting in camps while white Afrikaners are being let in on a fast track. We feel like that, as a moral matter, we can’t participate in.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett



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FACT CHECK: South African President Claims Afrikaners Aren’t Persecuted

CLAIM: White South Africans — members of the Afrikaner, or Boer, minority group — do not face racial discrimination or persecution by the South African government.

VERDICT: FALSE. Major political leaders in the country have called for the murder of Boers to thousands of supporters, and the government recently passed a law that could lead to the expropriation of land without compensation, South Africa-born Breitbart News Senior Editor-at-Large Joel Pollak told Fox News this week.

Speaking with anchor Will Cain, Pollak touched on President Donald Trump’s recent use of the terms “land confiscation,” “discrimination,” and “genocide” to describe the Afrikaners’ plight after a small group arrived in the United States as refugees on Monday:

“Of those three terms, genocide might be a bit premature,” he said. “But, when you look at the statements of leading South African politicians, notably Julius Malema, who held a rally on South Africa’s Human Rights Day in March and proclaimed ‘Kill the farmer, shoot the farmer, kill the Boer’… That ought to have been taken up by South Africa’s judicial system, but the courts decided not to intervene.”

Malema, the leader of South Africa’s far-left Economic Freedom Fighters party and a member of the National Assembly, regularly leads supporters in chants calling to “kill the Boer”:

Just this March, South Africa’s highest court refused to allow an appeal of a lower court’s decision that the phrase “Kill the Boer” was not hate speech or incitement under the law,” Breitbart News reported.

Pollak went on to explain, “Even in this country, that would be outlawed. It’s not protected speech under the First Amendment if it’s incitement to immediate harm or violence. That is what that is. So, members of that group certainly have good reason to fear the government.”

On real discriminatory legislation that has been passed, the conservative radio host also brought up how South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed the Expropriation Act earlier this year, allowing the seizure of property without compensation.

Pollak said, “The South African government passed a law called the Expropriation Act, which allows property, not just farms, to be taken without compensation. And it is circulating regulations that restrict the percentage of white employees that can work in various industries.”

“So the president is accurate that members of that group are facing racial discrimination and the threat of expropriation,” he added.

Since the U.S. accepted a mere 59 Afrikaner refugees, Ramaphosa called them “cowardly” and claimed that they do not face discrimination, Breitbart News reported.

Cain went on to draw a connection between American diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) ideology to what is going on in South Africa, to which Pollak concurred:

That is exactly right. I do think there’s a strong interest in the United States in this story because of the rollback of DEI. This is the logical consequence of DEI that people are expropriated and denied job opportunities and that they have to seek their opportunities elsewhere. 

There’s also a broader strategic element in all of this. South Africa is an important ally of the United States in Africa, and these racist policies inside South Africa actually make South Africa weaker. We need South Africa to be strong. Racial discrimination weakens a society, any society. We don’t want to see South Africa become another Rwanda. We need South Africa to be strong, and hopefully this gets the message across that South Africa needs to reform. 

By the way, not just a planeload of 59 refugees — 70,000 Afrikaners have applied for refugee status. And if nothing else, the American rugby team is about to get a lot better. 

In a final remark before the Fox News segment ended, Pollak commented on an Episcopal charity group for quitting a taxpayer-funded refugee program because of Trump’s welcome of the Afrikaners.

“There is a reluctance to help members of so-called privileged groups, but how easily we forget that it is often privileged groups who are the targets of these kinds of threats,” he said. “The Tutsi in Rwanda, for example, were seen as more highly educated and professional — and a million were murdered in the Rwandan genocide.” 

“So I’m afraid the church’s stance there falls short of a moral standard,” he added.

Olivia Rondeau is a politics reporter for Breitbart News based in Washington, DC. Find her on X/Twitter and Instagram. 



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White South Africans arrive in U.S. after Trump administration grants refugee status

Trump cuts financial aid to South Africa



Trump cuts financial aid to South Africa

01:45

A plane carrying dozens of White South Africans arrived at Dulles International Airport on Monday, a State Department official said, after the Trump administration granted them refugee status in the United States.

The group — which includes families with children — was expected to be greeted by U.S. officials at the northern Virginia airport, documents obtained by CBS News show.

Earlier this year, President Trump directed officials to allow South Africans of European descent to be resettled through the U.S. refugee program, alleging they have faced discrimination by South Africa’s post-apartheid government. The South African government has strongly denied the allegation.

This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.

Joe Walsh

Joe Walsh is a senior editor for digital politics at CBS News. Joe previously covered breaking news for Forbes and local news in Boston.

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First group of White South Africans granted refugee status depart to U.S.

The first group of White South Africans who were granted refugee status by the U.S. is set to fly out of Johannesburg on Sunday, officials said.

The flight from Johannesburg’s OR Tambo Airport was set to depart around 2 p.m. ET en route to Dakar for refueling before flying to Washington, D.C. The group includes 49 Afrikaner South Africans, made up of mainly families, as well as a few young couples in their twenties and older people.

“The application for the permit (to land) said it’s the Afrikaners who are relocating to the USA as refugees,” Collen Msibi, a spokesperson for the South African Transport Ministry, told AFP.

The plane – a U.S. charter aircraft –  is set to arrive at Washington’s Dulles International Airport at about 6 a.m. on Monday, and then will fly to Texas.

Msibi said his department had not received any other applications for further resettlement flights.

U.S. officials have planned a Monday press event at Dulles airport to welcome the group, according to government documents obtained by CBS News last week. Sources familiar with the effort told CBS News the timing of the plan could change.

In February, President Trump issued an executive order directing officials to use the U.S. refugee program to resettle Afrikaners, who are an ethnic group in South Africa made up of descendants of European colonists.

Mr. Trump, at the time, claimed that White South Africans faced “government-sponsored race-based discrimination.” He cited a law that U.S. conservatives, like South African-born Elon Musk, have said allowed racially motivated seizures of land owned by White South Africans. The land expropriation law is meant to redress inequalities entrenched under the former apartheid system.

South Africa’s government has strongly denied any land confiscations or racially motivated discrimination.

The hastily arranged initiative to welcome Afrikaners stands in stark contrast to the Trump administration’s move to ban most other refugees from entering the U.S.

The processing of Afrikaners granted refugee status has also been unusually fast. Before Mr. Trump’s second term, the State Department said the refugee process, on average, took between 18 to 24 months to complete due to background checks, medical screenings and other interviews. The Afrikaners ready to travel to the U.S. have gone through that process in a matter of months or even weeks.

Meanwhile, relations between South Africa and the United States have nose-dived this year over a range of domestic and foreign policy issues, culminating in Washington’s expulsion of Pretoria’s ambassador in March.

Mr. Trump said in March that any South African farmer seeking to “flee” would have a “rapid pathway” to US citizenship, despite halting all other refugee arrivals to the U.S. immediately after taking office in January.

South Africa’s foreign ministry on Friday said the resettlement of Afrikaners “under the guise of being ‘refugees’ is entirely politically motivated and designed to question South Africa’s constitutional democracy”.

It would, however, “not block citizens who seek to depart the country from doing so,” it added.

In a statement, the State Department said the American Embassy in Pretoria, South Africa, has been interviewing those who have applied for resettlement to the U.S. under Mr. Trump’s directive to welcome Afrikaners and that it continues to receive inquiries.

“While we are unable to comment on individual cases, the Department of State is prioritizing consideration for U.S. refugee resettlement of Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination,” the department added.

White South Africans, who make up 7.3% of the population, generally enjoy a higher standard of living than the black majority of the country.

Mainly Afrikaner-led governments imposed the brutal race-based apartheid system that denied Black South Africans, who made up 75% of the population, political and economic rights. The country allowed equal voting in 1994, leading to the election of Nelson Mandela as the first Black Prime Minister. 

Sarah Carter and

Camilo Montoya-Galvez

contributed to this report.

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U.S. plans to receive and aid white South African refugees as soon as next week, document shows

The Trump administration is planning to soon receive the first group of white South African refugees it says deserve a safe haven in the U.S. because of alleged racial discrimination in post-Apartheid South Africa, government documents obtained by CBS News show.

The initial arrival of the South African refugees could happen as early as next week, according to the documents, which describe the effort as a “stated priority” for the Trump administration. Officials have planned a Monday press event at Dulles International Airport in Virginia to welcome the group, the documents show, although sources familiar with the effort told CBS News the timing of the plan could change.

In February, President Trump issued an executive order directing officials to use the U.S. refugee program to resettle Afrikaners, an ethnic group in South Africa made up of descendants of European colonists, mostly from the Netherlands. 

The president claimed that Afrikaners faced “government-sponsored race-based discrimination,” citing a law that U.S. conservatives, like South African-born Elon Musk, have said allow racially motivated seizures of land owned by white South Africans. South Africa’s government has strongly denied any land confiscations or racially motivated discrimination.

The hastily arranged initiative to welcome Afrikaners stands in stark contrast to the Trump administration’s move to ban most other refugees from entering the U.S. 

One of Mr. Trump’s first actions after returning to the White House was suspending the American refugee admissions program, stranding thousands of approved refugees who had been identified as vulnerable individuals fleeing violence and persecution in Africa, Asia and other parts of the world.

White South Africans supporting President Trump and South African and U.S. tech billionaire Elon Musk gather in front of the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria, on Feb. 15, 2025, for a demonstration. 

MARCO LONGARI/AFP via Getty Images


Federal courts have ruled against Mr. Trump’s plan to shutter the refugee program, which Congress created in 1980 to offer refuge to those fleeing persecution because of their race, religion or political views. A federal judge recently ordered officials to resettle the approximately 12,000 refugees who were ready to travel to the U.S. when the refugee program was paused in January.

The processing of Afrikaner refugees has also been unusually fast. Before Mr. Trump’s second term, the State Department said the refugee process, on average, took between 18 to 24 months to complete due to background checks, medical screenings and other interviews. The Afrikaners ready to travel in the U.S. have gone through that process in a matter of months or even weeks.

While the State Department’s long-standing program to assist refugees during their first months in the U.S. has been halted due to Mr. Trump’s actions, his administration has instructed resettlement officials to use Department of Health and Human Services funds to aid the Afrikaners. 

The government documents show resettlement officials were told they can use funds administered by HHS’ Office of Refugee Resettlement to help Afrikaners secure housing, household items and basic necessities during their first 90 days in America, including “groceries, weather-appropriate clothing, diapers, formula, hygiene products, and prepaid phones.”

CBS News reached out to the Departments of State and Health and Human Services about the plans to resettle Afrikaners as refugees.

In a statement, the State Department said the American embassy in Pretoria, South Africa has been interviewing those who have applied for resettlement to the U.S. under Mr. Trump’s directive to welcome Afrikaners and that it continues to receive inquiries.

“While we are unable to comment on individual cases, the Department of State is prioritizing consideration for U.S. refugee resettlement of Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination,” the department added.

Camilo Montoya-Galvez


Camilo Montoya-Galvez is the immigration reporter at CBS News. Based in Washington, he covers immigration policy and politics.

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