White privilege? AfriForum’s Kriel claims white South Africans are ‘second-class citizens’

AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel says white people in South Africa are not “privileged”.

Kriel was responding to remarks made by the former ambassador of South Africa to the United States (US), Ebrahim Rasool, who says there is no white genocide in South Africa. Rasool also said white people in South Africa continue to be privileged.

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Are white people second-class citizens?

However, in an interview with The Citizen on Tuesday, Kriel said white people in South Africa have become second-class citizens.

“When Mr. Rasool says white people are privileged, I wonder what measure he uses. That is probably just a financial factor. The fact is I do not think white children are privileged to hear that they should be killed through slogans such as ‘kill the boer, kill the farmer’.

“Privilege is to have your dignity intact, and it infringes on the dignity of Afrikaners if people can sing that we should be killed. If your culture is not being respected, it is being treated like a second-class citizen,” he said.

Land and equality

The Equality Court in August 2022 ruled that the singing of “Kill the boer, kill the farmer” by EFF supporters in Senekal in October 2020 was not hate speech.

AfriForum appealed the ruling in the Supreme Court of Appeal in 2023 and lost the case.

According to a 2024 essay by lead researcher at UCT’s Land and Accountability Research Centre (LARC), Katlego Ramantsima, and the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation’s Refiloe Joala, 86% of land “remained in white minority hands at the end of apartheid”.

Rasool’s speech and potential consequences

Kriel also said the Rasool’s address at Cape Town International Airport could exacerbate tensions between South Africa and the US.

“He has done a lot of damage regarding this relationship and one would have expected him to keep a low profile and double down. He says he was embarrassed, it is the people of South Africa that were embarrassed because he placed his ideology over the interests of the people of South Africa,” he said.

AfriForum has been blamed for the current tensions between Washington and Pretoria. The group is accused of spreading misinformation about alleged white genocide and the targeting of white people through race-based laws.

Further tensions between South Africa and the US

Meanwhile, Sanet Solomon, a political analyst from the University of Free State (UFS) told The Citizen on Tuesday that Rasool’s remarks at the airport could aggravate the diplomatic rift between South Africa and the US.

She said it displayed his lack of remorse about the sentiments shared during the Mistra webinar.

“This could have further implications on bilateral trade and foreign direct investment. Given Trump’s volatility and unpredictable behaviour over the past few months, South Africa is likely to find itself engrossed in Trump’s tariff wars which would cripple South African businesses dependent on trade with the US.”

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