Second group of white Afrikaner South Africans arrive in United States

A second and much smaller group of white Afrikaner South Africans arrived quietly in the United States on Friday without any fanfare.

And no private jet for them either. They left the country on a commercial flight from Johannesburg.

Like the first batch, who relocated to the US in early May, they claim to be persecuted in their home country.

The group is part of some 8,000 Afrikaners who will reportedly be resettled in the US over the next few months.

Controversially, they have been granted fast-tracked “refugee status” by President Donald Trump.

He has falsely claimed they are the victims of a “genocide”.

In February, he signed an executive order halting all aid to South Africa, accusing the government of doing “terrible things” to Afrikaners.

He described them as the victims of “unjust racial discrimination” saying their land was being taken away from them.

Trump’s view appears to stem from a recent law that allows land expropriation without compensation in extremely rare cases.

South African officials say the policy is part of efforts to address land-ownership disparities that are one of the starkest legacies of apartheid.

Three-quarters of the country’s private land is still white-owned and not a single expropriation has taken place.

The minority Afrikaner ethnic group are mostly descendants of Dutch colonialists and have a long history in the agricultural sector.

They make up about 60 per cent of the country’s white minority, which itself makes up about 7.2 cent of the population.

Those that have applied to relocate to the United States also say they are hoping to move to escape crime, and particularly farm murders.

Police statistics show that out of 26,232 murders last year, just 44 were linked to farming communities, of which eight victims were farmers.

Crime researchers say the overwhelming majority of murder victims are black.

There has been an outcry in South Africa, the US, and elsewhere to his decision which comes as Trump halts all other refugees admissions.

South Africa has repeatedly rejected the US president’s claims.

The country’s President Cyril Ramaphosa reiterated the government's position during his meeting with Trump at the White House in May.