Why the media should stop calling white South Africans ‘refugees’

Mzansi is many things: unequal, violent, frustrated, politically volatile and economically strained. But it is not a war zone.

- Professor Armand Bam

Fleeing: Media is urged to stop calling white South Africans who relocated to United States 'refugees'.

Dissatisfaction with governance, fears about crime, frustration with taxation or discomfort with transformation policies do not automatically amount to persecution.

With the Trump administration planning to expand its assistance to Afrikaners, raising the limit to 17 500 from 7 500 and declaring an “emergency refugee situation”, the term “refugee” is being used once again.

There is a difference between leaving and fleeing. The media should know that.

The increasing numbers of white South Africans relocating to the United States and elsewhere are being described in headlines, interviews and commentary as “refugees”. The term is emotionally powerful. It evokes images of desperation, persecution and survival. But it is also a legal and historical category and its careless use matters.

According to the United Nations Refugee Convention, a refugee is someone unable or unwilling to return to their country owing to a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, political opinion or membership of a particular social group. Historically, the term has been associated with people escaping war, ethnic cleansing, authoritarian violence and state collapse.

South Africa is many things: unequal, violent, frustrated, politically volatile and economically strained. But it is not a war zone. Dissatisfaction with governance, fears about crime, frustration with taxation or discomfort with transformation policies do not automatically amount to persecution.

People have every right to emigrate. The issue is not that white South Africans are leaving. The issue is how parts of the media ecosystem narrate that departure.