White South Africans en route to ‘da hood’: Welcome – Namibian (Opinion) 03-06-2025

“White South Africans en route to ‘da hood’: Welcome

By Jackie Asheeke

3 June 2025

Several of my friends and family here in the United States (US) have asked me for my opinion on president Donald Trump’s latest unfounded and ridiculous proclamations about white South Africans as refugees and genocide in South Africa.

[…]

White South Africans, please call yourselves refugees and come to the ‘hood’. I welcome you. You won’t last a year.

To those contemplating becoming a ‘white refugee in the US’, rather go get dental surgery with no lidocaine.

With whimsy in my mind, let me muse about several points.

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White South Africans who would dream of living in wealthy white neighborhoods in the US, forget it. You can’t afford it. US utilities, taxes, food, petrol (we call it ‘gas’), ground transportation, or entertainment are above your pay grade.

I live in Delaware, which has a lower cost of living than many other states. To see a movie at the Cineplex costs you the equivalent of R288 per person!

[…]

Socially, the barriers will be significant. Most Americans despise foreigners who come to “take their jobs” or “benefit from tax-payer-funded programmes”.

The news media would have you believe that the visceral xenophobia in the US is only for brown and black people, and there is some truth in that. America is a race-conscious country. But what you do not see in the media is that in unenlightened areas of the US, anyone with an accent will catch serious attitude.

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I am laughing at the mention of this latest Trump nonsense, because he couldn’t care less about white South Africans […]. This whole nonsense is the Afrikaner side of Elon Musk talking, not Trump. His presidential pronouncements have nothing to do with the facts on the ground in South Africa.

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WATCH YOUR ATTITUDE

Incoming white South Africans, beware: Watch your negative attitudes about people of colour. You might be assumed to be ‘Mandela haters’.

If you value your health, never use the word ‘coloured’.

That is a putdown over here with roots in an entirely different cultural history than yours. Google it and learn. You should practise never calling black people ‘monkeys’ (you’ll get stomped for that), though you may get away with ‘kaff*r’ because most folks over here don’t know the word (until they look it up on their phones, and then you should run.) God help you if you use the N-word – you’ll die on the spot.

White South Africans, Trump cares nothing about you. You are a publicity stunt. You have no votes to gather, you are not in his electoral base, you cannot give him an airplane, you cannot give copious amounts to his campaign; you are political cannon fodder. You could all disappear tomorrow, and he wouldn’t lose a night’s sleep.

Musk and someone with white South African lobbyists’ money in their pockets wrote his statements, and he repeated it with no knowledgeable background whatsoever, which, sadly, Trump tends to do on many issues.

‘WEAK-KNEED’ RAMAPHOSA

And finally, can someone please slap weak-kneed South African president Cyril Ramaphosa for me?

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More than two decades ago, I cheered our beloved late founding president Sam Nujoma, when he pulled Tony Blair up by his bootstraps back in 2002. So many people, supposedly supporters of Namibia, whined, moaned and pulled their hair out when our leader, a black man, defended his point of view in front of a European!

Ramaphosa has obviously dismissed Nujoma’s bodacious historic example and said “Ja, Meneer, baas” when Trump insulted him. When will our African leaders stop being so flattered by an invitation from anyone they perceive as a powerful white man that they sell out and smile like simpletons when they are being put down?

South Africa does not need Donald Trump or the US to exist. The US actively worked to prevent an end to apartheid! […]

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Videos of Julius Malema making his usual raving, radical statements were played.

Why didn’t Ramaphosa counter with a demand that Trump explain his white supremacist, Holocaust-denying, rabidly puritanical, ignorant supporters’ speeches regularly made in the US? […] In the view of some, the US should rather work hard to prop up the weakened African National Congress’ Ramaphosa and pray to God that Malema and the Economic Freedom Fighters never come to power.

This opinion piece has been shortened. Read the full piece on The Namibian’s social media platforms.
– Jackie Asheeke is a professional writer and former editor at Windhoek Observer.”