SA Ambassador To US Dismisses ‘White Genocide’ Claim
South Africa’s ambassador to the United States, Roelf Meyer, has rejected claims that Afrikaners are facing a “white genocide”, saying the notion of a mass, targeted attack against the country’s white minority does not exist.
Speaking to the BBC, Meyer said he was surprised when he first heard US President Donald Trump make the allegation.
“Is he talking about us?” Meyer recalled thinking.
Meyer, who is himself an Afrikaner, said he had never experienced anything resembling a mass attack on Afrikaners.
“The notion of a mass attack on the Afrikaner was misrepresented,” he said, adding that the information reaching Washington had been distorted.
Meyer is a former National Party minister and was one of the leading negotiators involved in the talks that ended apartheid. He formally took up his post in Washington after presenting his credentials to Trump at the White House in May 2026. He succeeded Ebrahim Rasool, whose tenure as ambassador ended after the Trump administration expelled him in March 2025.
His comments come amid continued tensions between Pretoria and Washington over South Africa’s land-reform policies, trade, its case against Israel at the International Court of Justice and the Trump administration’s policy of admitting Afrikaners through a refugee programme.
The Trump administration has repeatedly cited alleged persecution of white South Africans in its policy towards Pretoria. South Africa has rejected the allegations.
Meyer has previously said there is significant “misunderstanding and misrepresentation” of South Africa’s constitutional framework and policies, including claims of government-backed violence and genocide. He has called for greater dialogue between the two countries.
South Africa does, however, face severe levels of violent crime, including attacks on farms and rural properties. The dispute is over whether that violence amounts to a coordinated, racially targeted campaign against white South Africans.
South Africa’s 2022 Census recorded the white population at 7.3% of the country’s population.
A 2025 Western Cape High Court judgment also described the belief in an impending “white genocide” as “clearly imagined and not real” in the context of a dispute over a bequest to the Boerelegioen, a white supremacist organisation. The judgment concerned the specific estate dispute and should not be read as a ruling on every instance of violence against farmers or other white South Africans.
Meyer’s latest remarks place him directly at odds with the central premise behind Washington’s Afrikaner refugee policy, as Pretoria seeks to repair relations with the Trump administration.
