Interview: Dan Roodt on Trump’s Intervention in South Africa

On February 7, US President Trump signed a presidential order that immediately halts all US aid to South Africa and breaks all cooperation between the countries. In 2024, the USA gave $453 million in support to the ANC-governed country via USAID, which has been suspended for at least 90 days. At the same time, Trump ordered the authorities to begin work to accept all white Afrikaners and their families as refugees because of the racism and oppression they experience.

In his presidential order Trump stated: 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. This Act follows countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.

Julius Malema, leader of the EFF who constantly sings the song ‘Kill a Boer, kill a farmer’.

The presidential order goes on to explain that not only landowners experience racism, and instructs the Ministry of the Interior and the Ministry of Homeland Security to prioritize all Afrikaners from South Africa fleeing racial oppression:

The United States shall promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.

Trump also pointed out that South Africa is acting against his administration’s policies in several areas, including by starting cooperation with Iran and by “accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide at the International Criminal Court”.

The US becomes the first country to grant asylum

FreeWestMedia meets Dan Roodt, a doctor of Afrikaans literature living in Johannesburg, who in South Africa is a well-known human rights activist. He is regularly published in the Afrikaans and English-language press with articles on the rights of Afrikaners and has also met with President Jacob Zuma to voice criticism and requests from the country’s shrinking white minority. According to Roodt, Trump’s decision to stop aid to and official cooperation with South Africa is an important milestone, although it may not have a huge practical impact on the country’s economy.

The blood-smeared walls of 9-year old Kayla Meyer’s bedroom. She and her family, Monty McCormack, 73, his son Kennith McCormack, 42, Kennith’s fiancée Marietjie Meyer and her 9-year-old daughter Kayla Meyer, were killed on a Randfontein farm in Rodora, Doornfontein, in March 2016.

“A large part of the aid is administered through USAID. It is usually advertised that it pays for HIV treatment for poor blacks, but it also goes to thousands of employees who administer this, and further to various investments in development and infrastructure in the country, the universities and so on. However, the country is so corrupt that only a small part of the money actually does any good. The investments in research and education also concern almost only left-liberal issues such as diversity and gender. The support also goes to various organizations that advance the woke cause,” he explains.

The United States has become the first country in the Western world to recognize the persecution of white South Africans. Roodt says that whites have previously tried to seek asylum in, among other places, Canada, but have been denied refugee status. There are today tens of thousands of white South Africans living in other countries, but these have had to go through the “normal” application processes, such as immigrant employees and the like.

“There are even special groups on Facebook where people discuss different possibilities to escape from South Africa and which countries it is possible to escape to. But there is also a financial limitation, it is expensive to go away, and many cannot afford it even though they are desperate,” he says.

There are today just over four million whites living in South Africa, of which about three million are Afrikaners, and according to initial reports, American authorities received over 50,000 applications of interest from people who wanted to move to the United States already in the first days after Trump’s government order.

“Most families already today have someone who lives abroad – in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the Netherlands, Great Britain or the USA,” explains Roodt.

Expropriation of white property without compensation

It was in early January that South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a law giving the authorities the right to seize property in order to make South Africa “more equal”.

“They have worked to get this law through for decades, to be able to seize white people’s land and now they have finally got it in place. It is signed and will now start to be implemented,” explains Roodt.

Dan Roodt explains that in the past, white farmers’ properties were seized in various rounds, but then it was mostly about blacks, who could show that their ancestors once lived on a certain farm, could take over the farm, but the landowner then received some compensation from the state. Now it is about being able to seize property without any compensation whatsoever and with no other justification than that the authorities consider it to be “in the public interest”.

“The definition of property is also very broad. It is about agricultural land, housing in urban areas, money in the bank, companies and even vehicles. There is no limitation on what property can mean in this law,” says Roodt.

More radical groups, such as the communist Economic Freedom Fighters, have for many years openly spoken of confiscating all farms and land belonging to whites. The party is an offshoot of the ANC and although the ANC is more cautious in its language, it is clear that the law is a big step in this direction.

Roodt points out that you can already guess what the consequences will be. The farms that during previous waves of land confiscation were taken over by blacks are today in ruins. Machines and equipment have been sold off or are rusting.

Vines have withered and fruit trees cultivated for generations have been cut down as firewood.

“This is communism but aimed specifically at whites. Now the target is farmers and functioning family businesses. There are today approximately 20,000 farmers in South Africa who feed the entire country. Without them, South Africa will starve,” says Roodt.

There is also a second law which has recently been adopted and which has not received as much attention, but which is part of the discrimination against whites, he points out. The law was adopted on 2

December and is called the Bela Act, which is an abbreviation of the Base Education Law Amendment Act. It gives the government the right to decide which language should be used in each individual school.

Education in Afrikaans. Most whites prefer to have their children taught in their mother tongue, but there are also blacks and coloureds who speak the language as their mother tongue. Photo: FWM.

“Its purpose is to deny Afrikaner children the right to education in their own mother tongue, Afrikaans. A hundred years ago we fought for this right against the ruling English, and now we are back to square one. Afrikaans was standardized in South Africa in the 19th century and has been spoken in the country for almost 400 years. They want to assimilate our children and take away their identity. It fits the definition of cultural genocide,” says Roodt.

There are a number of examples where Afrikaners and other whites in South Africa are discriminated against in different ways, says Roodt. It is almost impossible to be able to study to be a doctor or veterinarian, and racial quotas have also been introduced in other university courses. Eighty percent must be black, then certain percentages colored (mixed black and white), Indians and so on. Whites also have higher admission requirements, as they are considered privileged. But even if they meet the requirements, it is unlikely that they will get in because of the quota.

“Fewer than 5 percent of the students at the universities are white,” he says, and adds that many whites are forced to move abroad in order to study.

FWM: But how do you know which race the applicants belong to? Do you have any register?

“You have to state your racial affiliation when applying, but if they think you stated it wrongly, they will assign you an affiliation at their own discretion.”

The discrimination then continues in working life, where white engineers and other professional groups are only offered temporary employment with the lowest wages. There are also requirements for companies to have black majority owners in order to get government contracts, to have a staff that is mostly black, and so on. Racism exists at all levels in the country that describes itself as the “rainbow nation”, Roodt states.

The news publication Nya Tider has written extensively about the farm murders over the years, a slow genocide that the police and politicians simply downplay. Roodt says that this continues as before, but that it is increasingly also affecting whites in the cities, not just isolated remote houses or farms.

“People are used to South Africa having a high crime rate, but lately it is still something that is being discussed more and more among “ordinary” whites. You can’t go out anymore. You can be carjacked while waiting at an intersection or whatever. It happens all the time.

Angry reactions from the ANC – and the EU

The ruling ANC has strongly condemned Donald Trump’s actions, calling it “a direct attack on our sovereignty and territorial integrity, in violation of international law”.

Radical, antiwhite EFF members at a protest. Photo: FWM.

The civil rights organization AfriForum is accused of being “counter-evolutionary” and trying to racially divide South Africa. Former President Jacob Zuma’s party has gone so far as to file a lawsuit for high treason against AfriForum.

“The ANC falls back on proven communist rhetoric from the last century. They accuse Trump of supporting colonialism and apartheid. People blame AfriForum and that they would have spread fake news about South Africa – but what they say is true!” says Roodt.

Not surprisingly, Julius Malema, party leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, reacted strongly against Trump’s actions in a public statement:

“We want to make it categorically clear to the President of the United States that we will expropriate land without compensation and enforce legal measures to do this, and no threats will stop us.”

Elon Musk, in turn, has written on X that Malema should be considered an international criminal and sanctioned.

However, the EU itself has stood behind expropriation without compensation and expressed “its full support” for South Africa’s leadership after Trump’s actions.

Recognizes the right to Afrikaner self-determination

What effect Trump’s measures can have in practice remains to be seen, but Dan Roodt believes that the mere fact that Afrikaners are mentioned a separate ethnic group is absolutely decisive.

More than 3000 farmers have already been murdered in South Africa, symbolised by these crosses against a mountain at the Witkruismonument, near Pietersburg, Limpopo Province. Photo: FWM.

“No western country has previously recognized our existence. No country has acknowledged the discrimination and racism we have been singled out for. Trump’s statement is groundbreaking,” he says.

“Trump gives us recognition as an ethnic group and as a nation. It can have the same meaning as the Balfour Declaration in 1917 gave to the Jews. The Jews were recognized as an ethnic group with their own rights, including the right to a homeland, which later became Israel. Trump gives us the recognition as a nation and the right to decide for ourselves about our future, either in South Africa or elsewhere.”

When the apartheid system was abolished in 1994, various black tribes got their own areas, which they already had during the apartheid era. So-called bantustan or homelands. The Zulus got KwaZulu-Natal, the Tswana got Bophuthatswana, the Xhosa got Transkei and so on. But the whites got none of that, and still don’t. On the contrary, the ANC ensured that the whites could not even rule over areas where they were in the majority.

“They deliberately divided voting constituencies so that white areas were always part of a large black residential area so that the whites could never be in the majority. Sometimes such constituencies ended up

in completely different provinces, just so that whites would not be able to govern themselves,” says Roodt.

He hopes that Trump’s actions can be a bargaining chip and lead to a new constitution for South Africa.

“We need local autonomy in the style of Swiss cantons. It is the only possibility for our survival in our country. The centralized power held today by the ANC means they rule all areas of our lives, including education, security, health and the economy,” he explains.

There are different reactions among whites to Trump’s actions. One is of course positive, but some believe that South Africa is simply beyond saving already. Others want to keep fighting against being second-class citizens in the country they and their ancestors built up.“There are also thoughts about not applying for asylum individually, but that there should be international recognition of going into exile as a group, a kind of exodus,” says Roodt. He believes that there are states in the United States that are sparsely populated and where Afrikaners could get a certain autonomy and possibly a national home. He specifically mentions Wyoming, which has just under 600,000 residents. American states have a large amount of self-determination, he points out.

There are also those who believe that the countries in Europe, which supported the ANC in the 1980s, should take their responsibility today and offer today’s refugees from South Africa a safe haven.

“These countries, such as Sweden, the Netherlands and the former East Germany, are the ones responsible for today’s failure in South Africa,” says Roodt.

FWM: Is there no country in Africa that would like to receive all these competent whites who are also used to working with blacks?

“Yes, one could also imagine that. There are many whites who have black helpers as cleaners, gardeners et cetera – tasks that they quickly get used to doing themselves when they move abroad – but they are used to managing blacks. 

The blacks also often take help from their white employers to cope with various administrative problems and contact with the authorities. Every white person is thus his or her own social agency. There are countries that already today welcome whites, for example Zambia, which took many whites from Rhodesia when it became Zimbabwe, and that realize the value of having a competent and well-educated group to build a good society. 

South Africa will collapse if all whites leave

On X it is often stated that if the whites do not like the situation in South Africa they can leave from there.

 “Afrikaners have been offered the chance to go and live in America. So discussion is over. They have to go,” writes user Eddy Tshisa, for example.

“As one of those Afrikaners who will never emigrate to America, I must honestly say that it is terrible how our black countrymen want us to go, wish us to disappear and hate us. I thought we got over this after 30 years,” writes user Leandi Erasmus.

The Schubart Park highrise building complex in Pretoria, built for civil servants in the 1970s, has become completely dilapidated and declared ‘unfit for human occupation’ by a local court. Photo: FWM.

Dan Roodt believes that the blacks are going to be the big losers if they drive out the white section of the population. It is white engineers, administrators and technicians who still hold South Africa above water.

“If the whites were to leave, a mass exodus to, for example, the United States, it would have an immediate effect such as a monetary crisis. With the whites, a large part of the country’s capital would disappear, the foreign reserves would be wiped out and the country would suffer from hyperinflation. It would be like Zimbabwe in a replay, but it would only be the beginning,” he says.

Roodt says that you can already see today what happens when unqualified blacks are assigned during racial quotas to important functions in society. The energy supply has become a major problem, with constant rolling “brownouts”, that is, not total power outages, but lower voltage in the power grid for a longer period of time. Lights flicker and it damages electronics. With water, it is even worse, with some communities without water for weeks at a time.

“It also damages the environment. They have started to release untreated sewage into rivers and into the sea. Some beaches, which previously attracted tourists, are today a health hazard. Without whites, the infrastructure would soon completely collapse.” 

FWM: But aren’t there enough educated blacks? Even during apartheid, large resources were put into the black universities. Nelson Mandela was a trained lawyer…

“People have slightly different views as to responsibility. It seems that educated blacks are more interested in advancing their own wealth and status than making sure society works. Short-term enrichment, simply put. Then the rulers are also not very often well-educated, many have no academic education or in any case not in scientific fields such as mathematics or technology.”

Dan Roodt further explains that clans and families play a decisive role in black politics. You reward people from your own tribe or clan, even if there are others who are more competent. This also applies in companies, where you hire from your own group. It is not seen as corruption, but as a duty to help one’s own.

“There are also political assassinations, in the fight for positions. Both between different factions within the ANC and at municipal level,” says Roodt.

Africa for blacks?

FWM: Wasn’t it logical to leave Africa to the blacks?

“South Africa is not a typical African country. The first trading post was established in 1652 and already in 1657 whites lived there permanently. At that time, southern Africa was uninhabited, except for very small groups of bushmen who were nomads. It was only towards the end of the 18th century, when the whites expanded north with their wagons, that they encountered black tribes who in turn were expanding south. You cannot say that “blacks were there first”.

“Then of course there are blacks who say ‘Africa for the Africans’, but do they also say ‘Europe for the whites’?”