President Cyril Ramaphosa said the 59 Afrikaners who had flown to the US as “refugees” had committed a “cowardly act” and were clearly unhappy with efforts to redress the inequities of the apartheid past. “I think that it’s a sad moment for them. They may be feeling excited that they left the country, that they’ve got somebody like President (Donald) Trump,” Ramaphosa said at an impromptu press briefing at the annual Nampo harvest festival near the Free State town of Bothaville.

Ramaphosa was pointedly flanked by officials of Grain SA, the umbrella group for South African grains farmers, including CEO Tobias Doyer. “But in the end it’s a group of South Africans demonstrating that the changes and transformation that we are embarking on here, they’re not favourably disposed to it. That’s why they are running away. As South Africans, we are resilient. We don’t run away from our problems,” Ramaphosa said. “And if you look at all national groups in our country, black and white, they’ve stayed in this country because it’s our country and we must not run away from our problems. We must stay here and solve our problems.

You are a coward when you run away, which is a truly cowardly act. On Monday, May 12, 2025, the "refugees" arrived in the United States, where they were greeted by high-ranking US officials who claimed that they had been "living under a shadow of violence and terror" in South Africa. Pretoria has categorically denied allegations of Afrikaner persecution in South Africa — allegations that are red meat for US President Donald Trump’s racially-charged Maga political base. “I’m here as a farmer but the organisers also wanted me to be here as the president. So I’m here in both roles to listen to them and discuss policy matters,” Ramaphosa said.

Top of that list will be the Expropriation Act that allows for the confiscation of land by the state without compensation — a policy that stirred the embers of Trump’s crusade against South Africa. Ramaphosa’s remarks were brief and he then embarked on the back of a tractor-hauled trailer to go view the sights of Nampo, including the cattle stand where he said he hoped to see some brahman.