It may be odd to suggest that the Soviet leader had anything worth saying about the confrontation between the USA and South Africa that Ebrahim Rasool unleashed, leading to his being declared persona non grata by the Trump administration.

It is not. Lenin is said to have argued that whatever any elected leader of Russia thought after the 1917 overthrow of the Tsar, their troops were “voting with their feet,” by leaving their trenches and refusing to fight any longer in World War One.

This is exactly what Afrikaners are now doing – in their tens of thousands.

Afrikaners have been told that they are wrong to look to AfriForum which appealed to President Trump for support.

AfriForum had been blamed for what the South African government described as spreading misinformation about land grabs and farm attacks in the country.

This after the recent cancellation of US foreign aid to South Africa and the threat of worsening trade relations between South Africa and the US.

However, AfriForum has justified their campaign in the US as fighting for the injustices that minority groups, such as the Afrikaners, face. According to the group, this includes the reality of more than 100 race-based laws.

The Citizen

In reality it makes little difference whether AfriForum or their many ANC aligned critics are right of wrong – Lenin’s maxim applies.

As the BBC reported:

Close to 70,000 South Africans have expressed interest in moving to the US following Washington’s offer to resettle people from the country’s Afrikaner community, a business group has said. 

The South African Chamber of Commerce in the USA (Saccusa) said its website received tens of thousands of registrations from those seeking more information.

The key choice: deal with race or deal with inequality?

The ANC has, since it came to power in 1994, chosen to put race ahead of inequality.

That is the essence of its Black Economic Empowerment policy. No matter how rich you are if you are black, you deserve support. No matter how impoverished you are if you are white, you must pay. It is as simple as that.

Trump loathes these criteria, arguing passionately against DEI – Diversity, Equality and Inclusion. He began scrapping these measures as soon as he came to office.

Is he right or is the ANC right to insist on race as a criteria? It depends on your perspective.

The ANC’s rule has led to corruption on a vast scale. As the government’s Zondo commission reported in 2022:

State capture in the South African context evolved as a project by which a relatively small group of actors, together with their network of collaborators inside and outside of the state, conspired systematically (criminally and in defiance of the Constitution) to redirect resources from the state for their own gain…

The Commission estimated the total amount of money spent by the state which was ‘tainted’ by state capture to be around R57 billion. More than 97% of the R57 billion came from Transnet and Eskom. Out of these funds, the Gupta enterprise received at least R15 billion. The total loss to the state is difficult to quantify, but would far exceed that R15 billion.

None of this should be a surprise. The ANC leadership had become an “entitled” elite, who milked policies of BEE for all they were worth.

White Afrikaners found themselves excluded from jobs in the state, parastatal institutions and even in private companies. Universities founded to encourage and support their language were forced to teach in English. They believed their lives on farms were under threat.

And so they have turned to the one country that offered them sanctuary: the United States under Donald Trump. So far 70,000 are said to have asked for resettlement.

It is a great pity that they are making this choice. The USA may look alluring, but its allure may prove ephemeral. And the Trump presidency is certainly not one that I would endorse. But who cares what I say, or what Rasool or Ramaphosa says: Afrikaners are voting with their feet.