Only five South Africans were admitted to the United States as refugees in the last fiscal year, out of 16,292 admissions in total, and that number sits at the center of a puzzle US officials are now prepared to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to solve: why so few white Afrikaners have applied to a refugee program built specifically for them.
An August proposal seen by the Guardian outlines a research and advertising effort of roughly $335,000, drawn up by the US mission in South Africa together with a state department research unit for the embassy in Pretoria. The document is candid about the gap in official knowledge. “There’s currently little research about why Afrikaners are not applying to request referral into the US Refugee Admissions Program,” it reads. Applications have “trended lower than expected” since Afrikaners were allowed to apply directly online in November 2025.
For South Africans, the plan would mean a visible foreign government campaign on their own soil. The proposal sketches three phases. First, focus groups in eight locations: Pretoria and Krugersdorp in Gauteng, Bloemfontein and Kroonstad in the Free State, Stellenbosch and Worcester in the Western Cape, and Kimberley and Orania in the Northern Cape, the last being an Afrikaner-only separatist community. Each location would host two age groups, 20 to 35 and 40 to 55, with participants sorted by urban or rural setting and household income. A survey of 1,000 Afrikaners, conducted online and offline, would then test which messages resonate in which communities. The final phase is a six-month digital campaign, mostly in Afrikaans with possibly some English, aimed at Afrikaners “interested in migrating”. Because the community is difficult to reach through conventional social and press channels, the department would hire an agency with local knowledge and deploy “trusted messengers”.
The program’s origins lie in a February 2025 executive order directing officials to prioritize Afrikaner resettlement while the broader refugee program remained suspended. Administration officials have claimed Afrikaners face racial discrimination and even “white genocide”, assertions the South African government rejects and which experts have widely dismissed, saying there is no basis for claims of targeted violence or genocide.
The numbers underline how far reality has diverged from expectations. In the fiscal year that ended 30 September, the US admitted 16,292 refugees, with Afghans making up most of that figure and only five South Africans among them, according to the most recent data reporting. A year earlier, South Africans accounted for 342 of 38,102 admissions. The president had set refugee admissions at 7,500 last year, the lowest in US history, then raised the cap to 17,500 in May, with the added slots going primarily to Afrikaners. Under Joe Biden, the overall cap had been 125,000.
A state department spokesperson defended the policy in response to questions. “We continue to process and admit as refugees Afrikaners in South Africa who are escaping the threat of government-sponsored race-based discrimination,” the spokesperson said, adding that President Trump “has been very clear” about prioritizing Afrikaner resettlement under the executive order.
Pretoria’s position is blunt. Its foreign minister, Ronald Lamola, said in New York last month that “there is no evidence” for the genocide claim, which the government calls unfounded and politically motivated. South African officials also argue that the low take-up of the resettlement offer itself shows the claims are false.
Meanwhile, the dispute sits inside a wider rupture between the two governments. Trump announced last November that South Africa would not be invited to the 2026 G20 summit, which the US hosts in Miami in mid-December, citing alleged abuses against white farmers. Washington has cut aid and restricted visas over South Africa’s race and land policies. Last month, the US ambassador in Pretoria, Leo Brent Bozell III, wrote in an op-ed that his government was “shocked” by what it saw as Pretoria’s silence on a set of US requests, citing concern over the country’s 2024 Expropriation Act and a push to make rural crime a priority.
Trump’s 2025 order alleged that South Africa had taken “aggressive positions” towards the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide at the International Court of Justice and reinvigorating relations with Iran for commercial, military and nuclear arrangements. This year’s Nobel peace prize went to Navi Pillay, the South African judge who chaired the UN commission that concluded Israel was guilty of genocide in Gaza, prompting Trump to write on Truth Social that he knew “nothing about this woman” and that the prize should have gone to “the Great United States of America, whose Representative, ME, settled eight Wars, and many other things”.
Money is flowing behind the policy in other ways too. Just before funds expired, the administration moved more than $175m from the state department’s Human Rights and Democracy Fund into 43 grants worth $176.9m, most of the $205m Congress appropriated for the fund. One grant, worth $1m, is meant for “advancing white Afrikaner rights” in South Africa and collecting data on abuses against minorities; no recipient has been named. Sources with knowledge of the awards process told the Guardian that administration figures lobbied personally for the awards, reflecting the priorities of JD Vance on European cultural identity and Stephen Miller on immigration and support for white minorities. The bureau that runs refugee admissions has new leadership as well: Adam Zerbinopoulos, a career diplomat, became its senior official on 31 August.
For now, the proposed campaign remains a pitch on paper. What it reveals is an administration confronting the gap between its own narrative about South Africa and the choices of the very people that narrative was meant to serve. Whether the focus groups and the $335,000 survey can close that gap, or simply document it, remains the open question.