US support for Afrikaner autonomy can stoke racial rift, Mbeki Foundation warns

The Thabo Mbeki Foundation has warned that growing US support for Afrikaner organisations and their demands for greater cultural and political autonomy risks entrenching the racial divisions South Africa has spent three decades trying to dismantle.

In a 123-page paper titled The United States of America and the Future of the Afrikaners in South Africa, released on Sunday, the foundation argues that diplomatic tension between Pretoria and Washington cannot be understood solely through disputes over land expropriation, BEE, farm attacks or South Africa’s foreign policy.

Instead, it places the dispute within what it calls the unresolved “national question” in both countries — the continuing consequences of slavery and racial discrimination in the US and colonialism and apartheid in South Africa.

The paper comes days after the US ambassador to South Africa, L. Brent Bozell III, said former president Thabo Mbeki was the person best placed to help break the diplomatic impasse between Pretoria and Washington. Bozell said Washington had “run out of patience” with the Ramaphosa administration and argued that Mbeki’s stature and experience could help unlock negotiations.

The foundation’s paper does not present Mbeki as a potential diplomatic intermediary. Instead, it offers a detailed critique of the political relationship that has developed between sections of the Afrikaner community and the Trump administration.

It examines the visits to Washington by Afrikaner organisations, including the Solidarity Movement and AfriForum, as well as a June 2025 delegation comprising FF Plus MP Corné Mulder, Southern African Agri Initiative president Theo de Jager and National Employers’ Association of SA CEO Gerhard Papenfus.

The paper reproduces the demands that the delegation said it had taken back from Washington, including the classification of farm attacks as priority crimes, an ANC denunciation of the Kill the Boer chant, opposition to land expropriation without compensation and exemptions for US companies from BBBEE requirements.

It also examines the Solidarity Movement’s “Washington Memorandum”, which called for greater recognition of Afrikaner cultural autonomy and proposed US assistance for an Afrikaner development fund to finance community infrastructure, including safety, social, employment and training structures.

The memorandum also referred to the establishment of a place where Afrikaners could resettle in concentrated numbers.

The foundation argues that these demands amount to an attempt by sections of the Afrikaner community to secure a degree of separate political and cultural existence within South Africa.

It draws a distinction between Afrikaner organisations and Afrikaners as a whole, noting that prominent Afrikaners have rejected the portrayal of the community as a persecuted minority.

The paper cites a 2025 statement signed by 46 prominent Afrikaners, titled “Not In My Name!”, which rejected the narrative that Afrikaners were victims of racial persecution and argued that portraying them as victims distorted South Africa’s complex social and historical realities.

The foundation also points to assessments by Afrikaner intellectuals and commentators that it says contradict claims of widespread economic persecution.

It cites research attributed to Frans Cronje and Hermann Giliomee, which estimated that Afrikaner living standards had risen faster during the first two decades after 1994 than during any comparable 20-year period since the end of World War 2. It also cites figures showing substantial growth in the income of commercial agriculture between 2007 and 2023.

The paper nevertheless acknowledges the serious failures of the democratic state, including high levels of poverty, unemployment, crime, inequality and weak service delivery.

It argues that these problems cannot be addressed by abandoning policies aimed at overcoming the racial economic inequalities inherited from apartheid.

A substantial portion of the paper is devoted to comparing South Africa’s experience with the US response to its own history of slavery and segregation.

It traces the US government’s use of affirmative action and other targeted programmes aimed at addressing racial inequality, including the “40 acres and a mule” policy following the US Civil War and Donald Trump’s own 2020 “Platinum Plan” for black Americans.

The foundation uses this history to challenge opposition to BBBEE and other forms of redress in South Africa.

It argues that the US itself has repeatedly recognised that formal legal equality does not necessarily eliminate the socioeconomic consequences of historic discrimination. In its conclusion, the paper says South Africa’s transition in 1994 represented its own form of emancipation from colonialism and apartheid, meaning that the country still faces the task of dismantling its socioeconomic legacy.

The foundation also links the current tension to what it describes as the weakening of the ANC and the broader democratic movement.

It argues that this weakening has created space for organisations representing particular racial or community interests to exert greater influence over policy, while also creating an opportunity for sections of the Afrikaner community to seek forms of cultural autonomy that the foundation says resemble elements of apartheid-era “separate development”.

The paper identifies two objectives it attributes to AfriSol, the grouping it uses to refer to Afrikaner organisations involved in the US campaign:

The foundation argues that such an outcome would undermine the constitutional vision established through the negotiations that preceded democracy.

The foundation goes further, warning that the pursuit of racially separate political and economic structures could increase social instability

It points to the 1991 Codesa Declaration of Intent, signed by 19 political parties and state entities including the apartheid government and the National Party, which committed the parties to an “undivided South Africa” based on common citizenship, equality and security for all irrespective of race, colour, sex or creed.

The paper argues that the principles contained in the declaration subsequently informed the 1993 and 1996 constitutions and therefore represent a fundamental basis for the post-apartheid political settlement.

It warns that abandoning policies aimed at redressing apartheid-era inequalities could entrench what it describes as a “two nations” reality, in which socioeconomic divisions continue to follow racial lines.

The foundation goes further, warning that the pursuit of racially separate political and economic structures could increase social instability.

In its final pages, it argues that South Africa could face a more serious social rupture if it abandons efforts to address the legacy of apartheid. It invokes the 1968 Kerner Commission in the US, which investigated racial unrest and warned that the US was moving towards “two societies, one black, one white — separate and unequal”.

The paper concludes with an account of Mbeki’s negotiations with former Afrikaner Volksfront leader Constand Viljoen before the 1994 election.

According to the account, Viljoen recalled being taught as a boy never to start a fire in the veld unless he was certain he could extinguish it. Mbeki’s foundation applies the lesson to the current political situation, warning Afrikaner organisations against actions that could create consequences they would be unable to control.

“Do not start a fire unless and until you are sure you can put it out,” the paper concludes.

The foundation’s intervention comes as relations between South Africa and the US remain strained over trade, BBBEE, land policy, South Africa’s international alignments and Washington’s allegations of discrimination against Afrikaners.