The 12×30-foot storage unit in a Raleigh, North Carolina, suburb is crammed full of chairs, tables, mattresses, lamps, pots and pans.
Most of its contents will soon be hauled off to two apartments that Welcome House Raleigh is furnishing for three newly arrived refugees. It’s a job the ministry, which is a project of the Cooperative Baptist Fellowship of North Carolina, has handled countless times on behalf of newly arrived refugees from such places as Afghanistan, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Syria and Venezuela.
But these two apartments are going to three Afrikaners — whose status as refugees is, according to many faith-based groups and others, highly controversial.
Last week, Marc Wyatt, director of Welcome House Raleigh, received a call from the North Carolina field office of the U.S. Committee for Refugees and Immigrants asking if he could help furnish the apartments for the refugees, among the 59 Afrikaners who arrived in the U.S. last week from South Africa, he told media. It was a common request for the ministry that partners with refugee resettlement agencies to provide temporary housing and furniture for people in need.
And at the same time, the request was extremely challenging. After thinking about it, consulting with the Welcome House network director and asking for feedback from ministry volunteers, Wyatt said yes.
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“Our position is that however morally and ethically charged it is, our mandate is to help, welcome, and love people,” said Wyatt, a retired Cooperative Baptist Fellowship missionary who now works for CBF North Carolina. “Our holy book says God loves people. We don’t get to discriminate.”
He recognized that Afrikaners are part of a white ethnic minority that created and led South Africa’s brutal segregationist policies known as apartheid for nearly 50 years. That policy, which included denying the country’s Black majority rights to voting, housing, education and land, ended in 1994, when the country elected Nelson Mandela in its first free presidential election.
Like Wyatt and Welcome House, many faith-based groups are now considering whether to help the government resettle Afrikaners after the Trump administration shut down refugee resettlement for all others.
Last week, the Episcopal Church chose to end its refugee resettlement partnership with the U.S. government rather than resettle Afrikaners.
Presiding Bishop Sean Rowe said his church’s commitment to racial justice and reconciliation, and its long relationship with the late Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu made it impossible for the church to work with the government on resettling Afrikaners.
In January, in one of his first executive orders, President Donald Trump shuttered the decades-old refugee program, which brings people to the U.S. who are displaced by war, natural disasters or persecution. The decision left thousands of refugees, many living in camps for years and having undergone a rigorous vetting process, stranded.
But then Trump directed the government to fast-track the group of Afrikaners for resettlement, saying these white farmers in South Africa are being killed in a genocide, a disputed claim. About 50 farmers have been killed each year in South Africa over the past several years, and the attacks are undeniably brutal. But that represents only 1% of total murders in the country and doesn’t meet the definition of genocide. As a result, the order left many refugee advocates who have worked for years to resettle vulnerable people enraged.
“Refugees sit in camps for 10, 20 years, but if you’re a white South African Afrikaner, then suddenly you can make it through in three months?” asked the Rev. Randy Carter, director of the Welcome Network and a pastor of a CBF church. “There’s a lot of words I’d like to attach to that, but I don’t want any of those printed.”
Carter said he respects and honors the Episcopal Church’s decision not to work with the government on resettling the Afrikaners, even if his network has taken a different approach.
“The call to welcome is not always easy,” Carter said. “Sometimes it’s hard.”
At the same time, he said, it’s important resettlement volunteers keep in mind that the ministry opposes apartheid and racism, both in the U.S. and abroad, and is committed to repentance and repair.
The North Carolina field office for the USCRI resettlement group also recognized how fraught this particular resettlement is for its faith-based partners.
“In our communication with them, we said, ‘Look, we know this is not a normal issue. You or your constituencies may have reservations, and we understand that. That should not affect our partnership,’” said Omer Omer, the North Carolina field office director for USCRI. “If you want to participate, welcome. If not, we understand.”
Wyatt got nearly two dozen comments on his Facebook post in which he announced his decision to work with the refugee agency in resettling the Afrikaners. Nearly all wrote in support of his decision. “I’m up sleepless pondering this,” acknowledged one person. “Complicated, but the right call,” wrote another.
USCRI did not release the names of the three Afrikaners who chose to settle in Raleigh, a couple and a single individual. Other Afrikaners chose to be resettled in Idaho, Iowa, New York and Texas.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio suggested last week that more Afrikaners are on the way. The Trump administration argues white South Africans are being discriminated against by the country’s government, pointing to a law potentially allowing the government to seize privately held land under certain conditions. Since the end of apartheid, the South African government has made efforts to level the economic imbalance and redistribute land to Black South Africans that had been seized by the former colonial and apartheid governments.
Wyatt, who has been running the Welcome House Raleigh ministry for 10 years, providing temporary housing and a furniture bank for refugees, and now asylum seekers, said he has settled the matter in his mind.
“My wife and I have come to the position that if it’s not a full welcome, just like we would with anybody else, then it’s not a welcome,” he said. “If we don’t actually seek to include them into our lives like we would anybody else, then we’re withholding something and that’s not how we understand our holy book.”
Julie Roys contributed to this report.
Yonat Shimron is a national reporter and senior editor for Religion News Service.
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12 Responses
As a North Carolinian, I can promise you that we have enough racists here in the south. Send them back! That ministers forked tongue is like shaking hands with the devil. Upholding evil while playing church.
It is unacceptable in every way to discriminate against these Afrikaners just because of their white Afrikaner ethnicity. It is akin to calling a German a Nazi simply because they happen to be German.
It was a white Afrikaner and Nobel peace prize winner called F.W de Klerk who handed power over to Nelson Mandela in a peaceful transition of power in South Africa, but the legacy media don’t want to mention white Afrikaner De Klerk’s roll, it doesn’t suit their biased narrative.
It’s also unacceptable to discriminate against Black South Africans – Black farmers are also being killed – by only giving refugee status to white Afrikaaners. Well, it SHOULD be, but alas, here we are. That lays at the feet of the WH administration.
Anyone with a basic knowledge of world history should know of FW de Klerk. However, I cringe when people beg for credit and acknowledgement for doing what’s right. “A white man ended a racist, colonialist regime that was put in place by other white men to marginalize, dehumanize, rob, and disenfranchise the Black majority population.” Uh, good for him? You DO know ending apartheid was due to the growing economic sanctions and impact on South Africa from across the globe, NOT because there was any repentance or change of heart about humanity of Black South Africans, right?
Tell us you’re a confederate historian without telling us you’re a confederate historian.
It seems by your defnition of the “legacy media’s biased narrative,” Nelson Mandela himself was the main contributer?
In his book, Long Walk to Freedom, Mandela was pretty clear about F.W. de Klerk: “Despite his seemingly progressive actions, Mr de Klerk was by no means the great emancipator.
“He did not make any of his reforms with the intention of putting himself out of power. He made them for precisely the opposite reason: to ensure power for the Afrikaner in a new dispensation.”
https://www.bbc.com/news/world-africa-59252082
Perhaps you may be reading some alt sources, such as the ones that refer to Mandela as “the convicted felon of the Communist terrorist organization, the African National Congress, which fought to overthrow South Africa’s apartheid regime?” I could see how you would come to such a conclusion outside the ‘legacy media,’ you know, from the sources themselves.
Cheers.
it is also unacceptable that they get to “jump the line” so to speak just because of their white Afrikaner ethnicity.
They are not being held to the same asylum/refugee rules that non-white seekers are- they’re not expected to apply in the first adjacent country, or wait in Mexico. They’re not impacted by cancellation or limits on our refugee programs.
They shouldn’t be discriminated because of their ethnicity- but nobody is suggesting that? They also shouldn’t be given preferential treatment (which IS what’s happening) because of their ethnicity. They should be in the same line as all refugees are in.
Jen Manlief
They jumped no queue by themselves. They took advantage of a legal offer to come to the USA by the stroke of the presidents pen. Whether that is fair or not is the same as Jesus parable of the workers who only worked the last hour yet received the same wage.
We don’t get to judge or discriminate as the article clearly infers in the paragraph “He recognises that Afrikaners are part of a white ethnic minority that led a brutal segregation list policies….etc”
Not all white Afrikaners who are descendants of the Dutch settlers were complicit by association. That is a terrible generalisation and racist statement. Many white Afrikaners fought against oppression at a huge cost and risk to themselves.
However you will find yourself best placed to comment after you have travelled to South Africa to spend a night behind guns and electric fences on a farm with white Afrikaners.
“Whether that is fair or not….”? So now we are using scripture to justify the blatant racial discrimination against Black South Africans for daring to be the wrong skin color?
Let’s be clearer: “they took advantage of a racially discriminatory offer for ONLY WHITE Afrikaaners to come to the USA by the stroke of our President’s pen.” We have to call it what it is. Our nation is showing racial preference, and ultimately discriminating against Black South Africans, even as Black farmers are ALSO being robbed and killed across South Africa.
I say that as someone who recently travelled to South Africa and spent the night in a township that was created during apartheid to confine the Black South Africans to specific less desirable land; these townships STILL EXIST to this day.
The irony? Our nation was just bragging about how we were getting rid of DEI and racial preferences, because we are “better” and have “moved past” that. I guess it’s just the “wrong groups” were being preferred.
Thanks for posting this thought-provoking article. I’m saddened by public policies that punish individuals for decisions beyond the control of those individuals, whether they are immigrants or international students. Kudos to Welcome House Raleigh for demonstrating the love of Jesus to all.
I have a BIG problem with the selective, racial discriminatory executive order that led to the Afrikaaners being here in the US. But that’s on the WH administration.
So, given the Afrikaaners are here, I applaud this church for stepping in and making sure these “refugees” are taken care of.
I believe this should be the church’s approach to all who are here; don’t take out our frustration with bad immigration policy on the vulnerable who are already here.
Why doesn’t trump take care of resetting them. He threw out black and brown immigrants, literally to a likely “gone forever,” no call to your wife, children, parents, etc. foreign gulag, not even back to from whence they came (country of origin). Let him and his racist cronies pay for and resettle them.
Apartheid ended thirty years ago. The Afrikaner refugees appear to be too young to have participated in it, so let’s not declare them guilty based on their skin color. Political leaders in South Africa have been filmed calling for the slaughter of whites. The farms the government has seized have fallen into ruin. South Africa is spiraling into chaos. Afrikaners are being murdered. They are at far greater risk than the millions of welfare seekers streaming across our southern border.
Jim Crow “ended” in the 60s, yet there is an entire generation of Boomers still around who participated in it. Why would we think any different of Afrikaaners when apartheid ended in the 90s?!?!?
And what do you mean by participation? Let’s be clear: to sit idly by and DO NOTHING while watching an entire group be marginalized and maligned IS to participate in it. (Yes, that goes for Boomers during Jim Crow too). That is one thing we have a very tough time admitting here in the States: “My ancestors didn’t own slaves” or “I didn’t personally enforce Jim Crow” does not exonerate those who knew what was going on and did nothing about it. Sin and injustice THRIVE in environments of passive silence.
No one is saying that Afrikaaners are guilty solely based on skin color. We ARE saying showing preference to them over Black South African farmers – which South African data shows are ALSO being killed – is wrong.
Long story short: Denying Black South African farmers refugee status based solely on skin color is wrong. And to sit silently by while it happens is to participate in it.
I had hoped we Americans were better than that. But….