Carolyn E. Holmes in ‘The Conversation:’ The American fixation on white Afrikaners in South Africa stretches back nearly a century
A few days after Donald Trump boycotted a G20 summit in Johannesburg, he announced South Africa would not be invited to the next G20 meeting, taking place at his resort in Miami in March 2026.
Trump said it was a “total disgrace” that South Africa hosted the November event, citing allegations of a “white genocide” against Afrikaner farmers. This is vigorously denied by the South African government which says such claims are “widely discredited and unsupported by reliable evidence”.
Trump’s fixation on South Africa’s white Afrikaner minority has become a central plank of US refugee policy, with their applications now given priority under a new refugee system.
This preoccupation by some Americans with white Afrikaners has a long history dating back to the publication of a large sociological study focusing on poor white Afrikaners in the 1930s.
In this episode of The Conversation Weekly podcast, we speak to Carolyn Holmes, an assistant professor of political science at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, to trace the history of the links between white nationalists in the US and South Africa. She says:
South Africa has always been a shadow case for the US. It has been for a century … It’s a way of talking about US politics without ever saying civil rights, without ever saying United States.
Listen to the interview with Carolyn Holmes on The Conversation Weekly podcast.
This episode of The Conversation Weekly was written and produced by Mend Mariwany, Gemma Ware and Katie Flood. Mixing by Michelle Macklem and theme music by Neeta Sarl.
Newsclips in this episode from PBS Newshour, The Hindustan Times, CNN, CBS News, ABC News and Forbes Breaking News.
Listen to The Conversation Weekly via any of the apps listed above, download it directly via our RSS feedor find out how else to listen here. A transcript of this episode is available via the Apple Podcasts or Spotify apps.
Gemma Ware, Host, The Conversation Weekly Podcast, The Conversation
This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.