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The U.S. has started scheduling interviews with some Afrikaners in South Africa. This follows an executive order from President Trump that offers the white minority group refugee status. That move has emboldened other groups in South Africa who are now calling on Trump to go even further and support their secessionist ambitions. Kate Bartlett reports from Johannesburg.
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NELSON MANDELA: We shall build a society in which all South Africans, both black and white, will be able to walk tall without any fear in their hearts.
KATE BARTLETT, BYLINE: President Nelson Mandela's inaugural address at the dawn of South Africa's multiracial democracy in 1994.
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MANDELA: A rainbow nation at peace with itself and the world.
BARTLETT: Then, as now, not everybody wanted a rainbow nation.
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BARTLETT: Trump's return to power and his false claims that the South African government is persecuting white Afrikaner farmers has shaken South Africa to its post-apartheid core. It's galvanized many Afrikaners, the descendants of mainly Dutch colonists, like singer Steve Hofmeyr, who released this Afrikaner pride anthem earlier this year.
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STEVE HOFMEYR: (Singing) From the Africa song, (non-English language sung).
JOOST STRYDOM: Our call to the United States government is a very clear message. Help us here.
BARTLETT: Joost Strydom is the leader of Orania, a whites-only enclave of some 3,000 Afrikaner nationalists in South Africa's semi-desert Karoo region that was set up at the end of apartheid. But Trump's championing of white Afrikaner farmers has given Orania new impetus to a push for secession.
STRYDOM: The only stable and sustainable future is recognizing us a people. Now, President Trump already did that in his executive order by specifically referring to Afrikaners. The next logical step is to recognize a territory.
BARTLETT: The secession is wildly improbable. The issue has reopened old racial wounds. Fikile Mbalula, secretary-general of the ruling African National Congress party, couldn't hide his anger when responding to recent reports that U.S. officials are proceeding with their plan to process Afrikaners who want to move to the states.
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FIKILE MBALULA: The refugee centers - that is just madness that you can build refugee centers in a country as peaceful as South Africa.
BARTLETT: There is no evidence Afrikaner farmers, who are still among the most privileged groups in South Africa, are being persecuted, as both Trump and his South African-born adviser Elon Musk have claimed.
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UNIDENTIFIED GROUP: (Chanting) Free the cape. Free the cape.
BARTLETT: Now, the small Cape Independence Advocacy Group is heading to Washington this month to lobby the government to support its push for a referendum on whether the wealthy Western Cape province should secede.
PHIL CRAIG: Cape independence is the desire of South Africa's Western Cape province, which is 1 of 9 in South Africa and the one which contains Cape Town, to break away from the Republic of South Africa and to form its own democratic state.
BARTLETT: The fringe group's cofounder, Phil Craig, says he believes an independent Western Cape or what's been dubbed Cape Exit - in a nod to Brexit - would be more sympathetic to the Trump administration's foreign policy goals than the current South African government.
CRAIG: The Western Cape would be far better off as an independent country. They're facing many challenges, and these include chronically low economic growth, chronically high unemployment, 142 race-based policies.
BARTLETT: But South African President Cyril Ramaphosa takes, quote, "a very dim view" (ph) of secessionist groups, said his spokesman, Vincent Magwenya.
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VINCENT MAGWENYA: These groups who are heading to Washington do not represent the majority of South Africans, whether it's the Orania movement or it's AfriForum or it's this Cape Independence Advocacy.
BARTLETT: Most citizens, he says, still believe in Mandela's dream.
For NPR News, I'm Kate Bartlett in Johannesburg.
(SOUNDBITE OF MUSIC) Transcript provided by NPR, Copyright NPR.
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