Why America wants Afrikaners
SPECIAL POST: Even politically motivated actions often have underlying economic rationales – whether intentional or not
On Friday, the president of the United States issued an unprecedented Executive Order against South Africa, citing human rights abuses and national security concerns. It halts all U.S. aid to the country and directs agencies to prioritise the resettlement of Afrikaners1 as refugees. The order condemns South Africa’s Expropriation Act 13 of 2024, signed by President Ramaphosa two weeks ago, which it claims enables the government to seize Afrikaner-owned farmland without compensation. It further accuses the South African government of dismantling equal opportunity in employment, education and business, while fostering rhetoric and policies that fuel violence against Afrikaner landowners.
As expected, the Executive Order has caused much consternation in South Africa. Minister of Foreign Affairs Ronald Lamola has dismissed it as factually inaccurate and rooted in misinformation. He criticised what he described as a propaganda campaign aimed at misrepresenting South Africa and expressed disappointment that such narratives had influenced US decision-makers.
Several political and cultural explanations have been suggested for Trump’s move. Some analysts view it as an appeal to his conservative voter base, particularly those sympathetic to narratives of white persecution in South Africa, a long-standing talking point in certain right-wing circles. Others suggest it is a geopolitical manoeuvre aimed at punishing South Africa for its increasingly adversarial stance toward the West, including its legal action against Israel at the International Court of Justice. A third explanation points to Elon Musk, the South African-born billionaire, who has criticised race-based policies like black economic empowerment, arguing they discriminate against white South Africans. His company, Starlink, has been barred from operating in South Africa due to regulations requiring partial black ownership for telecom licenses.
Perhaps one or all of these are true, but let me offer another explanation, one that seems not to have featured in debates locally or in the US: there are good economic reasons why Trump would want to recruit migrants from South Africa.
Consider the 2023 American Community Survey, which collects detailed data on US residents, including foreign-born populations. ‘South African’ is one of 78 ethnic categories, with an estimated 85,985 South Africans living in the U.S. (with a margin of error of about 8,000). This places them in a similar population range as Latvians, Cape Verdeans, Australians, and Assyrians.
Of course, not all of the 86,000 are Afrikaners. In fact, South Africans stand out in one key category: they report the highest diversity in racial identification, with a greater share listing two races compared to other ethnic groups. Even in America, we remain diverse. The survey also provides insights into language use – 66% of South Africans speak only English, while 34% speak another language. Just 3.4% reported not speaking English ‘very well’. Given these numbers, a rough estimate suggests that between 30,000 and 40,000 of the South Africans in the US are Afrikaners.
So why would Trump want more of them? The survey offers some clues. South Africans in the US are highly educated, with South African males having the highest proportion enrolled in college or graduate school among all ethnic groups. That translates into well-paying jobs and higher incomes. At 86%, they are the most likely of any group to earn a private wage or salary. Most importantly, they boast the second-highest median income at $107,595 – surpassed only, frustratingly, by the Australians. In short, South Africans make a valuable contribution to the U.S. economy.
But there is another fascinating detail hidden in the survey. It does not just record earnings – it also tracks industry type. And guess where a significant number of South Africans are employed? Agriculture. In fact, South Africans have the highest proportion of any ethnic group working in agriculture, forestry, fishing, hunting, and mining – by a wide margin. Consider the graph below, which ranks the top ethnic groups by their share employed in these industries.
Five percent might not seem like much, but it is significantly higher than the next group, the Pennsylvania German, who come in at 4%. (For those unfamiliar, the Pennsylvania German – often called Pennsylvania Dutch – are descendants of early German-speaking immigrants with deep agricultural roots.) What makes South Africans unique, however, is that they are not just farmers – they are highly skilled, well-educated, and economically successful. Unlike many traditional farming communities, they combine commercial farming expertise with some of the highest levels of education and income among immigrant groups. In other words, these are not subsistence farmers looking for low-wage labour; they are experienced agribusiness professionals, accustomed to managing large-scale commercial farms in one of the most challenging agricultural environments in the world.
There is good reason Trump would want more of these kinds of immigrant farmers. The US is facing a severe and worsening shortage of farmers, with the number of farms dropping from 2.04 million in 2017 to 1.89 million in 2023 – a 7% decline in just six years. The total land in farms has also shrunk, falling from 900 million acres in 2017 to 879 million acres in 2023. Meanwhile, the workforce is aging rapidly: the average American farmer is now 58 years old, and for every farmer under 35, there are six over 65. Fewer young Americans are entering the profession, discouraged by soaring land and equipment costs, complex regulations and an unpredictable income stream shaped by climate, commodity prices and government policy. Addressing this issue requires attracting people who not only want to farm but who also have the expertise to succeed in an increasingly complex and capital-intensive industry.
All of this is to say that if migrant recruitment were based purely on data, Afrikaners would be the obvious choice. They are not only highly skilled commercial farmers but also well-educated, entrepreneurial and economically successful. In a sector struggling to attract young talent, they represent a ready-made solution – bringing both experience and innovation to sustain and grow American agriculture. Yes, there may be other motives for Trump’s Executive Order, but the most straightforward explanation is an economic one.
An obvious follow-on question is whether Afrikaners will make the move. That, perhaps, is a question for a future post.
‘Why America wants Afrikaners’ was first published on Our Long Walk. Support more such writing by signing up for a paid subscription. The images were created with Midjourney v6.1.
Afrikaners are a South African ethnic group descended primarily from Dutch, German, and French Huguenot settlers in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, historically associated with the development of the Afrikaans language and the country’s farming and political elite. Today, there are an estimated 2.5 million Afrikaners in South Africa.
A former manager of mine was fond of saying, "Never ascribe to higher thinking that which can be explained by stupidity". The narrative of whites being dispossessed is red meat for Trump's political base. And Trump is probably being (mis) informed by Musk, who is pissed off over Starlink.
I have to say that this reads as "When you're a kid with a hammer, everything looks like a nail". The notion that there is an economic explanation or logic to this action, that it is caused by economic motives, just doesn't work in this case. You can argue, and perhaps this is what you mean to argue, that there could be an economic rationale that would be a better one than the real explanation or cause, but it is not the actual cause.
Moreover, you don't really seem to be appraising the underlying reasons for fewer people to be in the agricultural sector in the United States, or you are acting like it is a lack of intrinsic motivation and a lack of meritorious skill with reference to agriculture which can be remedied by importing more motivated and skilled farmers. What's happening in the American agricultural sector is not a result of young people leaving the field due to a lack of motivation and skill, it's a result of consolidation by large agri-businesses and the shift of a lot of global-scale agriculture to other countries, and the resulting difficulty of running an independent farm successfully. It's as if you tried to explain the failure of small retail businesses in the United States over the last forty years by saying "not enough people want to run an independent clothing store on Main Street" while ignoring both the coming of Wal-Mart and Amazon while also not looking at the impact of hedge funds and private equity on brick-and-mortar retail at all scales of operation.
Nobody behind this policy shift was thinking about helping out agriculture by importing skilled farmers. Importing skilled farmers wouldn't affect the situation of agriculture in the U.S. in the first place even if that was the logic. The story here is pretty much white Christian nationalism in the U.S. being a newly empowered sociopolitical position with maybe a small side-helping of Musk's disdain for post-1993 South Africa.