JONATHAN JANSEN | US Episcopal Church’s frostiness is a hint — the ‘refugees’ are in for a shock

Even before the 49 Afrikaner “refugees” landed at Dulles International Airport near Washington DC on Monday, the Episcopal Church (we use the term Anglican) in that country made it clear that they would refuse to “resettle” these white South Africans.

The reasons were many, according to a story by the Associated Press. These were not “refugees” by any stretch of the imagination. Said a conservative Christian friend in the US, never have fleeing refugees had so many earthly goods weighing down airport trolleys, and that after alighting from a private charter plane, nogal.

In refusing, presiding Bishop Sean Rowe of Episcopal Migration Services was defying a federal government instruction to resettle white South Africans, citing his church’s “commitment to racial justice and reconciliation”. Yes, the church had a refugee resettlement grant with the federal government, but this distasteful act of racial provocation flew in the face of a long history of working with the Anglican Church of South Africa fighting the real racism of apartheid oppression. In other words, the Episcopalians saw right through this racist charade and took a stand that will surely exact a price from a vengeful Donald Trump.

The white South Africans had jumped the queue. Real refugees wait for years to go through vetting processes and might still not get in. So what’s the rush? Trump was doing what he does best: give a racist dog whistle to white supremacists around the globe. I am your man. These poor souls in South Africa, whose ears are well-attuned to shrill racist sounds, jumped to attention. The motley group that made their way to the US Embassy in South Africa are not wealthy farmers who lost their farms; these are ordinary whites, as brilliant historian Neil Roos called them, suddenly receiving attention from a white supremacist with a bully pulpit and enormous political clout.

Pushing white South Africans to the front of the refugee queue should not surprise us. Long before Trump even heard about South Africa (or Lesotho, the country he claimed nobody knows about), he called African nations “shithole countries”. Channelling Hitler, Trump said of immigrants from Africa and Asia that they were “poisoning the blood of our country”. On more than one occasion then candidate Trump expressed his preference for immigrants from “nice countries” like Denmark or Switzerland. Whites, in other words.

I hope these “refugees”, should they have any capacity for self-reflection, will see that their saviour is the same man who sent a legitimate American resident with a dark skin to a prison hellhole in El Salvador leaving his family in huge distress; that a brown-skinned mother had her little girl wrested from her arms and sent from Florida to Cuba; that a young Muslim student was thrown into the slammer for daring to co-write a pro-Palestinian editorial for her college newspaper. Or maybe they too don’t give a damn; after all, those persecuted are not white people like themselves.

The “refugees” are in for a shock. There are millions of Americans disgusted with the racist bond between them and Trump that unfairly fast-tracked their clearance into a foreign country; it will not be long before they get an earful from the locals. From all over the US, I have received messages of shock and disgust that they came into their country on an openly racist ticket.

The group will soon discover that Trump’s Executive Order 14224 made English the official language (another political stunt) and that it will be hard to communicate in cultural isolation. Then they will find that having been part of this racist complot, it is going to be difficult to secure well-paying work in an economy reeling from Trump’s tariffs, and this time you cannot blame “the blacks”.

Like a used condom, Trump will discard them for he would have got out of the “refugees” what he wanted — a political quickie to impress his MAGA base. When that realisation hits them, I comfortably predict that some of the “refugees” will begin to make their way home perhaps even before Trump leaves office in less than four years.

Unlike the oppressive white state that spawned them, this government will not issue the “refugees” one-way tickets into exile as was done to thousands of South Africans who had the decency to resist apartheid. Our government, with all its faults, has been remarkably restrained, even generous, in their handling of these people whom, make no mistake, spat in the faces of black South Africans with this dastardly act. They cheapened the hard work of reconciliation and showed no grace having been let off the hook for the crime of apartheid.

As I searched the faces of the “refugees” in photographs of them leaving Johannesburg and arriving in the Washington area, I felt for the young children with them. The little ones had no say in the matter, and I can only hope that they will one day wake up to the knowledge that they were pawns in a tryst with the devil.