President Cyril Ramaphosa Criticises South Africans Seeking Refugee Status in the United States

Published 20 Oct 2026 at 8:15 PM

by Byron Pillay

3 min read

President Cyril Ramaphosa spoke at a Black Wednesday media engagement in Sandton on Monday, 19 October 2026
Ramaphosa addressed the fact that South Africans were travelling to the United States to seek refugee status
His remarks come as a Donald Trump administration programme grants refugee status to Afrikaners and other South African minorities

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President Cyril Ramaphosa criticised South Africans who sought refugee status in the US, describing some of their actions as unpatriotic. Image: Per-Anders Pettersson/ Saul Loeb
Source: Getty Images

Byron Pillay, a Briefly News journalist, has spent a decade reporting on South Africa's political landscape, crime, and social issues. He worked as a newspaper journalist for 10 years before transitioning to online journalism.

GAUTENG — President Cyril Ramaphosa has labelled South Africans who travel to the United States to seek refugee status as acting in the "most unpatriotic" manner, saying he finds it "unbelievable" that people continue to accept and repeat what he described as falsehoods about South Africa.

Ramaphosa made the remarks on Monday, 19 October 2026, during an ANC-hosted Black Wednesday media engagement with editors and journalists at The Leonardo Hotel in Sandton, Johannesburg.

Ramaphosa hits out at US-bound South Africans

Speaking at the event, the president said those making the journey to the United States were doing so with a specific purpose and were actively spreading misinformation about conditions in South Africa. He noted that even some American officials had acknowledged that claims being made about the country could not be substantiated.

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"Those who are rushing to the U.S. are doing it obviously for a particular reason and spreading falsehoods about our country," Ramaphosa said.

"It is our own people, our own fellow South Africans, who seem to have found a very fertile and accepting voice in the U.S. to rubbish their own country."

He added that the government intended to engage with those who believed the circulating claims, either to correct the record or to present a more balanced picture.

The US refugee programme at the centre of the dispute

The remarks respond directly to a special resettlement programme introduced by the Donald Trump administration in 2025, which extends refugee status to South African nationals of Afrikaner ethnicity or other racial minorities who can demonstrate a personal experience or well-founded fear of persecution based on race.

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