This online Dossier examines some perilous shifts in world power, prompted by recent development in US immigration policy that grant white Afrikaners refugee status. Through the Executive Order on Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa, the US has singled out South Africa as committing genocide against white minorities, putting in place a fast-tracked refugee programme for white Afrikaners.
These developments matter because they are shaping power, policy and public debates across the globe. Also, their consequences extend far beyond South Africa, reflecting a broader trend in which historically privileged groups are repositioned as endangered, while those who remain dispossessed are increasingly delegitimised. We see this starkly in how a fringe conspiracy has become US state policy, elevating the myth of a white genocide from online far-right propaganda to the basis for state action on immigration.
With the false narrative of a white genocide as an entry point, the Dossier critically examines how white supremacy is repackaged as victimhood, and how this reframing, now formalised in US foreign policy under President Donald Trump, undermines struggles for justice, redress, and universal rights.
The Dossier unpacks how the language of genocide, victimhood, and humanitarian rescue is being weaponised to protect privilege and to reverse or retard struggles for equality and justice. It examines how whiteness is presented as vulnerability, how demands for equality are recast as threat and historical accountability as discrimination, and how this is happening at the expense of the many who are excluded from protection, recognition, and redress. The Dossier seeks to make these dynamics visible and expose the dangers they pose. In doing so, it hopes to contribute to political analysis, public engagement, and activism for human rights and social justice in South Africa and beyond.
Note: This Dossier is not a static publication. It is a living document, as the terrain it engages is shifting in real time. For this reason, the content will expand and change over time by responding to developments, filling gaps in perspectives, and exploring new dimensions through diverse views and voices on a range of interrelated issues.
Current articles in the Dossier:
- A foreword by Heinrich Boell Foundation [hyperlink to article] outlining the context, relevance and purpose of the Dossier.
- Mazibuko Kanyiso Jara [hyperlink to article] traces how white right-wing organisations in South Africa transformed from apartheid-era beneficiaries into global protagonists of white victimhood. It discusses how an unresolved transformative project of nation-building, neoliberal transition, and a lack of scrutiny of whiteness, have enabled the white right to revitalise and strengthen.
- Romantha Botha [hyperlink to article] examines how white Afrikaner identity has been strategically invented and reinvented, obscuring its origins in conquest, appropriation, and apartheid power. The article explores how humanitarian language and historical erasure are mobilised to reframe redress and land reform as persecution, aligning Afrikaner grievance with global far-right politics.
- Nicky Falkof [hyperlink to article] analyses how the white genocide myth functions as a media and political strategy that recentres whiteness while erasing black suffering from global narratives of violence and risk. Focusing on digital moral panics and US refugee discourse, the article discusses how white vulnerability is amplified while black victims of violence are rendered invisible.
- Mandisi Majavu [hyperlink to article] situates the moment within South Africa’s longer history of racial hoaxes and moral panics, revealing how old myths have been repackaged in and through contemporary international far-right white networks and politics.
- Pieter du Plessis and Christi van der Westhuizen - [hyperlink to article] draw on conversations from a recent symposium to trace how global whiteness adapts, travels, and reasserts itself across borders. They confront how whiteness reinvents itself under the guise of vulnerability, discussing what is at stake in a world where power increasingly speaks the language of grievance.