By ignoring the steady internationalisation of domestic racial grievances, the South African government has left a dangerous vacuum that is currently being filled by global right-wing networks.
Local groups are bypassing domestic political channels to forge direct ties with American conservative movements. The move comes as the US administration has made the treatment of Afrikaners a foreign policy issue where the discredited narrative of a “white genocide” in South Africa has found fertile ground. The Trump administration's refugee programme for Afrikaners keen to leave South Africa is still underway.
South African organisation Lex Libertas has forged ties with the New York Young Republican Club (NYYRC), a conservative political organisation. International relations scholar Dr Oscar van Heerden said the relationship between the two appeared to be part of a wider effort by conservative and nationalist movements to build alliances across borders.
He said the NYYRC wanted to reach out to other right-wing conservative groups to “consolidate globally”, while US President Donald Trump had given them a rallying point.
“He gave them the narrative of a white genocide, of the killings of farmers, of the seizure of land,” Van Heerden said.
For Van Heerden, the bigger question is why South Africa has allowed the international campaign to develop with so little domestic engagement.
“In this day and age, there's no point in ignoring people like this, because they are dangerous. We need to listen and we need to engage,” he said.
Political parties and progressive groups had largely failed to challenge organisations such as AfriForum, Solidarity and Lex Libertas, he said.
“You can't possibly go around the world and tell people that you are being targeted, you are being deliberately killed, farmers are being targeted and killed, and their land is being taken, without there being any consequences.”
Van Heerden said the reluctance to confront the issue was partly driven by a fear of what might happen if race was placed at the centre of the political agenda.
“Everyone knows. I've said it for decades. I've said there's this big elephant in the room that deals with race. We have not dealt with our race question, our national question, in any meaningful way. And I think that there is a fear to deal with it,” said Van Heerden.
He said the relationship with Lex Libertas, which was founded by Dr Ernst Roets, was also part of a longer-running effort by South African white-right organisations to establish international links with conservative and nationalist movements.
“Whether it's Lex Libertas, whether it is his former outfit AfriForum and those guys, they have been going around globally, and Roets has played a very important role in this,” he said.
“They have been going around, connecting with these right-wing fascist conservative groupings, whether it's in Belgium, in Germany, other parts of Europe, and of course, in America.”
He said the relationship between the NYYRC and Lex Libertas could therefore be seen as an extension of that network-building.
The relationship building comes on the back of significant actions taken by the White House. In February 2025, Trump issued an executive order accusing South Africa of policies that were “fuelling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners”.
The US executive order said the Expropriation Act enabled the seizure of agricultural property belonging to ethnic minority Afrikaners without compensation and directed the US government to promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping what it described as race-based discrimination.
Now the issue has acquired another layer. After a fact-finding visit to South Africa in February, the NYYRC and Lex Libertas announced a joint campaign calling for the US to intervene over what they describe as the persecution of Afrikaners and other minorities.
The organisations are canvassing for 100,000 signatures on a petition calling on the US administration to appoint a special envoy to Afrikaners and other cultural minorities in South Africa and to recognise self-governance as a legitimate pursuit.
They are also preparing for a vigil featuring 3,000 white crosses on the National Mall in Washington DC, a conference on minority persecution in South Africa and a request for the US House of Representatives to hold congressional hearings on the country.
The NYYRC said it is helping Lex Libertas with the organisation and logistics of the White Cross project.
Roets told The National this week that he and the NYYRC met with officials from the US State Department and the National Security Council in March to highlight their concerns. He said the meetings included discussions about the White Cross project and their wider campaign.
Roets said Lex Libertas wanted the world to know how minorities are treated in South Africa. He said the organisation had repeatedly asked for a meeting with the South African government but it was ignored.
In response to questions from The National, NYYRC spokesperson Ian McMath said the organisation had approached Lex Libertas because it believed the organisation respected human rights and equality before the law and was therefore a “natural partner”.
“It is the NYYRC's position that the West is in a civilisational struggle for survival against a rising tide of third world politics characterised by tribal spoils systems, unequal laws, and European erasure. Just as the socialist crusade has an international reach, so should the emerging conservative movement. The Afrikaners represent one of the most critical fronts in this struggle.”
Pretoria's response
The South African government recently dismissed the allegations by the two parties.
The Department of International Relations and Cooperation said accusations of systemic persecution of Afrikaners were unfounded and that the government's response to concerns about racial targeting was based on evidence.
It said the police’s crime statistics did not show a pattern of racial targeting and were compiled by the SAPS Crime Registrar according to international standards for official statistics.
DIRCO also rejected the suggestion that white farmers were being disproportionately killed.
According to figures supplied by the department, nine people were murdered on farms between January and March 2026. Five were farm dwellers, predominantly black, while four were white.
The department also rejected the assumption that such crimes were committed exclusively by black South Africans, pointing to cases in which white farmers had been convicted of killing farm dwellers.
It said serious violent crimes, including murder, rape and aggravated robbery, had declined and that government was strengthening policing, intelligence and investigative capacity.
wendy.jdc@nationalmg.co.za