President Cyril Ramaphosa warned at an African National Congress conference that white supremacist ideas and baseless claims that South Africa’s Afrikaner minority is being racially persecuted are damaging the country’s sovereignty and national security.
He said some groups continue to cling to notions of racial superiority and oppose transformation and redress, promoting narratives of white victimhood that echo white supremacist rhetoric. Ramaphosa argued that the propaganda around alleged persecution of Afrikaners has tangible consequences for South Africa’s sovereignty, international relations and security, and called for a coordinated global effort to counter the narrative. He did not name individuals but insisted the agenda must be defeated both at home and abroad.
Claims of a so-called ‘white genocide’ in South Africa have been amplified by high-profile figures, taking a fringe far-right conspiracy to a much larger audience and raising tensions that affect the country’s diplomatic standing.
Those tensions were evident at the recent G20 leaders’ summit in Johannesburg, which the United States boycotted, saying it could not reach consensus in South Africa’s absence. The summit, chaired by South Africa, issued a communique highlighting issues such as gender equality and climate action. The 2026 G20 summit will be held at Trump National Doral in Miami. The US has invited Poland, rather than South Africa, to early meetings related to its upcoming G20 presidency, and US officials have publicly accused South Africa of tolerating racism and violence against Afrikaners.
Separately, the US plans to admit 7,500 refugees this year, reportedly mostly white South Africans, while tightening its refugee programme for other groups.
Afrikaners make up about 4% of the population—roughly 2.5 million people—and are descended from Dutch settlers and French Huguenots. They led the apartheid regime from 1948, a system that violently oppressed the black majority and concentrated wealth and security among white people. White South Africans remain significantly wealthier than black citizens; a 2017 government land audit found white people owned 72% of private agricultural land.
Although there have been high-profile, brutal murders of particular white farmers, available evidence does not show that farmers are being systematically targeted because of race or that they suffer disproportionately within South Africa’s generally high violent-crime rates.