They were handed small American flags and greeted as refugees by the seconds-in-command from the Departments of State and Homeland Security, just hours after President Trump charged that South Africa was engaging in “genocide.” It’s a word he has refused to utter about other conflicts, present and past, including on anniversaries of the massacre of a million Armenians by the Ottoman Empire. Afrikaners, who are the descendants of seventeenth-century European settlers in South Africa, are the only exception to an executive order issued by Trump, on his first day in office, that suspended refugee admissions, including for Afghans who aided Americans during the longest war ever fought by the U.S. This week, I spoke to Antoinette Sithole, whose twelve-year-old brother Hector Pieterson died on the first day of peaceful protests by Black children in Soweto, in 1976, over the white government’s order to teach in Afrikaans, the Dutch-based language spoken by Afrikaners, in Black schools.
Author: Robin Wright
Published at: 2025-05-14 22:30:00
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