JOHANNESBURG—South Africa’s top police investigative unit is investigating complaints of high treason against Afrikaner organizations that recently met with officials from President Donald Trump’s administration in Washington.
The White House visit included high-level talks, according to three groups lobbying for the rights of Afrikaners, who are mainly white descendants of Dutch, French, and German settlers who came to South Africa in the 1600s.
The Solidarity Movement is the largest Afrikaner movement in South Africa, with some 600,000 members. Among its many initiatives are the Solidarity trade union and the civil rights group AfriForum.
The groups allege that Pretoria is ignoring the murders of white farmers, that the state is preparing to confiscate white-owned property and shut schools and colleges where Afrikaans is the primary language, and that the South African government is denying white residents the right to employment by implementing a slew of affirmative action policies.
In the memo, the groups also called on the United States to specifically direct pressure on African National Congress (ANC) leaders “who are responsible for these policies” rather than on “individual farmers, manufacturers and ordinary citizens.”
They called on Trump to use targeted sanctions to punish “corrupt and vindictive” politicians from the ANC, the majority party in South Africa’s coalition government.
The police investigative unit Directorate for Priority Crime Investigation, also known as The Hawks, confirmed that four high treason dockets have been opened in response to allegations of misinformation, according to South Africa’s Independent Online news site.
Hawks head Lt. Gen. Godfrey Lebeya told the government-owned South African Broadcasting Corporation (SABC) that the dockets “concern individuals that may have crossed the border to go and communicate some of the things that are perceived to be in the direction of high treason.”
“The priority crimes unit will not hesitate to arrest anyone should the prosecutorial authority find High Treason was committed,” SABC reported on March 3.
Members of several leftist political parties took things further and filed legal complaints of high treason against the Afrikaner groups, alleging they were “guilty of spreading disinformation and misinformation with the aim of collapsing the government.”
AfriForum, Solidarity, and the Solidarity Movement have shrugged the complaints off as baseless.Trump’s Executive Order
The groups have a willing audience in Washington. Trump signed an executive order on Feb. 7, in which he froze aid to South Africa on the basis that Pretoria is committing human rights violations against Afrikaners.“In shocking disregard of its citizens’ rights, the Republic of South Africa (South Africa) recently enacted Expropriation Act 13 of 2024 (Act), to enable the government of South Africa to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation,” the order reads.
The executive order cites “countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business,” as well as rhetoric and government actions allegedly fueling hate and violence against white landowners.
South Africa’s white farmers—often located on large, remote agricultural properties—have been targeted by violence, with more than 300 farm attacks and 50 murders of white farmers in 2022, according to data from AfriForum.
The country’s commercial farms vary between large operations producing staple crops and smaller businesses that raise a few hundred head of cattle. Afrikaners have been South Africa’s main food producers for generations.
Trump’s order also invited Afrikaners to apply for refugee status in America.
In a Truth social post on March 7, he wrote, “To go a step further, any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship.”
Thousands have expressed an interest in doing that, although Afrikaner political parties and organizations indicated that the majority of South Africa’s 4.5 million Afrikaners would remain in the country.
ANC Responds
The ANC has denied it wants to seize land owned by white residents, although the Expropriation Act, signed into law in December, gives it the legal power to do so in certain cases.In September 2024, Ramaphosa also signed the Basic Education Laws Amendment Act, which prohibits school governing bodies from determining schools’ language policies and gives those powers to the state.
Afrikaner groups say the act specifically targets Afrikaans schools and will force them to accept pupils who cannot speak the language and thus lead to an erosion of standards.
The ANC argues that its laws, including those promoting affirmative action and black economic empowerment, are necessary to make South Africa more equal. During apartheid, which ended in 1994, employment opportunities for black people were limited largely to manual labor in the country’s factories and mines, with white collar and senior posts reserved for white residents.
Alleged Discrimination
One of Trump’s main campaign promises was to do away with the diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives of the previous U.S. administration.Trump promised to create a society based on merit, not race, and the Afrikaner groups say that they, too, are striving for this.
In Washington, the groups’ message was that South Africa’s affirmative action and black economic empowerment policies are discriminatory.
“South Africa is the most racially regulated country in the world. The laws not only discriminate against Afrikaners but are to the great detriment of economic growth, job creation and equality,” the Afrikaner memorandum reads.
“Companies have to pay premiums for black empowerment transactions. The best example is South Africa’s electricity utility, Eskom, which has to pay 30% more for procurement due to a black empowerment premium payable. The South African racial dispensation is an enrichment program for a small group of elites.”
In the document, the groups suggest that farm murders in South Africa are politically inspired and racially motivated.
“Farm murders are particularly brutal and their frequency, when compared to murders in the rest of the country, is very high,” they said. “The community is therefore particularly exposed to a government that expropriates [land] without compensation, while also being exposed to land grabs and land occupations, as well as calls for violence against them that are made publicly without any repercussions for those spreading hate against Afrikaners.”
Paul van der Walt, leader of the Transvaal Agricultural Union, which represents many Afrikaner farmers, told The Epoch Times almost 5,000 white farmers have been killed since 1994.
“After the ANC took power, crime increased dramatically, with a disproportionate number of white farmers murdered, and our statistics and records show that there is no doubt that this group is being specifically targeted,” he said.
Ultra-left political movements in South Africa often protest against what they call “white monopoly capital,” and sing an old anti-apartheid song called “Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer.”
‘False Information’
One of the political parties that pressed for charges to be lodged against the Afrikaner lobbyists is the African Transformation Movement (ATM).Its spokesperson, Zama Ntshona, told The Epoch Times the Afrikaner organizations had embarked on a “campaign of lies” about South Africa in Washington.
“They’re mobilizing against the state and they’re also sending false information to the world against the state. When you look at the Riotous Act, it speaks clearly: When you do that, you’re a treasonous person. They must be punished,” he said.
Ntshona added that there was “nothing special” about Afrikaners.
“We are all victims of brutal crime in South Africa, especially black people in poor townships. What makes white farmers special that they need all this attention on them? Is it because they’re white?” he asked.
Kriel responded that the killings of white farmers “are indeed special” and that he’d informed Trump’s officials “exactly that.”
“These murders are extraordinary not because the victims are white but because the murders often involve torture and racial abuse,” he said.
“The Ramaphosa government wants to explain these killings away as ‘normal crime.’ Please. Women and children are raped in front of husbands and fathers. Victims are burnt with irons. They’re tied up and assaulted until they’re barely alive. Would attackers who are motivated by simple stealing do these things? No. So something else is going on here. There are forces that are behind the targeted killings of white farmers.”
The Umkhonto we Sizwe (MK) political party also filed complaints against the Afrikaner organizations using South Africa’s Riotous Assemblies Act of 1956.
The MK party was founded by anti-apartheid activist and former South African president Nelson Mandela and others. Ironically, it was the Riotous Assemblies Act that the former white nationalist government used to prosecute and imprison thousands of anti-apartheid activists.
“In terms of this law, acts like instigating foreign intervention in internal affairs with intention to harm the state are high treason,” National Assembly member Nhlamulo Ndhlela said.
“AfriForum and their misguided friends misrepresented South African laws and situations and appealed to a foreign government to take steps that have resulted in real damage to our country,” he told The Epoch Times. “They are calling for sanctions against the country. So, their actions are treasonous.”
No Treason: Expert
Kriel dismissed the allegations against his group and the others as “absurd.”“Should the state go ahead with a case against us, it’ll make us stronger; it’ll confirm that there are ANC leaders who are abusing their power to govern against certain sections of the population,” he said.
“Send us to court and watch how we use that platform to show the world how the ANC and others are acting against the interests of the country. They are unpatriotic. We are patriotic because we’re fighting for the interests of all South Africans.”
Lawson Naidoo, an expert in South African law and executive secretary of the Council for the Advancement of the South African Constitution, told The Epoch Times the Afrikaner groups have “more than good reason” to feel confident.
“I can’t see any crime, let alone high treason, in going to a foreign country and moaning about your government’s supposed transgressions and oversights,” said Naidoo.
“For actions to be high treason they must threaten the existence, security or sovereignty of the state. As unpalatable as you might find the actions and statements of these Afrikaner guys, and the buddy-buddy relationship they seem to have with Trump, what they’ve done is not treason.”
Nevertheless, South African Minister of Police Senzo Mchunu, a senior ANC member, told The Epoch Times South African law enforcement agencies are taking the treason allegations “very seriously.”
No Government Visit to Washington Yet
The Afrikaner groups are not the only South Africans traveling to Washington after Trump imposed sanctions on the country.The Democratic Alliance (DA), a centrist political party and member of South Africa’s 10-party ruling alliance, the Government of National Unity, recently visited Washington. The delegation “engaged with key decisionmakers in Congress, the state department, and the White House,” according to MP Emma Powell, the DA’s national spokesperson on foreign affairs.
South African Minister of International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola expressed disappointment at the unofficial visit, telling South Africa’s IOL news that “representing South Africa’s foreign policy is the preserve of the executive.”
Presidential spokesman Vincent Magwenya told The Epoch Times that Pretoria’s attempts to meet with officials from the Trump administration “to counter misinformation and disinformation” about South Africa haven’t been successful.
“We’ll keep trying,” he said. “We need the U.S. government to hear the truth about what’s happening in our country.”
