Trump says white South Africans are persecuted; some are returning to a better life

Andrew Veitch left South Africa after being held up at gunpoint in his car. But now he feels there are greater threats in the United States, he said, citing mass shootings in public places as well as violence by U.S. immigration officers.

“People are being shot ‌in broad daylight. American citizens are being shot and killed,” said the 53-year-old, who moved to California in 2003. “I don’t want to live in a place like this.” President Donald Trump’s officials have said Immigration ‌and Customs Enforcement officers were justified in firing the shots that killed two U.S.

citizens in January, although video evidence has contradicted their accounts. Veitch plans to return to South Africa this year, one of thousands of white South Africans coming back, despite Trump’s statements that the ​white minority is being persecuted by the country’s Black majority government. Pretoria says there is no evidence of discrimination or persecution against whites.

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Many have left since the end of white minority rule in 1994, some citing crime and difficulty getting jobs, but many are also returning. Veitch is among 12,000 people who have checked their citizenship status in an online portal launched by the government in November after the overturning of a 1995 law that stripped citizenship from some South Africans who left. They represent a fraction of South Africans abroad.

The latest official statistics on returnees, from 2022, show that almost 15,000 white South Africans returned that year. Expats say South Africa means lower costs, less turmoil Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber said ‌1,000 people had reclaimed their citizenship, a number he expected to grow significantly ⁠as the programme takes off. “There is definitely a sense of optimism for South Africans abroad,” said Schreiber, part of the white-led Democratic Alliance party that has ruled in coalition with the African National Congress since 2024.

He is a returnee himself, having spent time in the U.S. and Germany before coming home in 2016. Two recruitment agencies that help expats ⁠relocate said the number of inquiries had jumped, and Reuters spoke to 10 South Africans who had either returned or were planning to, seven of them from across Europe and three from the United States. Their reasons, echoed in a 25,000-strong “Return to South Africa” Facebook group some belong to, included being closer to family, lower living costs and political turmoil abroad.

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