Ted Cruz Staff, USAID Met With Group That Called Apartheid A 'So-Called' Injustice

Ted Cruz Staff, USAID Met With Group That Called Apartheid A ‘So-Called’ Injustice

Leaders of AfriForum, an Afrikaner rights group, also posed for a picture with national security adviser John Bolton.

By Jessica Schulberg and Akbar Shahid Ahmed


WASHINGTON — The leaders of a South African group that has referred to apartheid as a “so-called” historical injustice recently toured Washington and met with top members of the U.S. government, including officials at the U.S. Agency for International Development and staffers for Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas). They even bumped into national security adviser John Bolton.

AfriForum, an Afrikaner rights organization, promotes the idea that white people in South Africa are under attack by that country’s government. It has been trying to spread its message internationally.

<snip>

Also on Wednesday, Kriel and Roets posed for a photo with Bolton at a Fox News studio, according to National Security Council spokesman Robert Palladino. Bolton did not know the AfriForum leaders, Palladino added. But the duo tried their best to make an impression: They gave Bolton a copy of Roets’ book and posted the picture on Twitter.

AfriForum, which describes itself as a civil rights group, was formed in 2006 as an outgrowth of a white trade union. It focuses on the rights of Afrikaners, a South African ethnic group largely descended from Dutch and French Huguenot settlers. The organization has 280,000 dues-paying members, according to Roets.

<snip>

A quarter-century after the end of white-minority rule in South Africa, the country’s white population still owns 72 percent of privately held farmland and a mere 10 percent of South Africans own 90 percent of the nation’s wealth. The post-apartheid government has bought up land for redistribution and assigned it to new owners, on the grounds that many were descended from black South Africans who unjustly lost their property during the colonial era and white rule.

<snip>

Roets has also referred to apartheid as a “woolly concept,” a comment he stands by. “What I mean by that is that it is a term that everyone is talking about, but if you ask people what it means, everyone would give a different answer,” he said. “Racism is also a woolly concept, democracy is also a woolly concept, reconciliation is a woolly concept.”

<snip>

Far-right groups in South Africa are working hard to win support abroad. They’ve received help from U.S. and Canadian commentators like Alex Jones, Ann Coulter, Mike Cernovich and Lauren Southern who have pushed their narrative of white persecution.

<snip>

He appeared happily surprised by his group’s ability to land meetings with American government officials. “We achieved much more than we thought we would — in terms of how we were received, in terms of the people we met with, who we were able to get in touch with,” he said.

The Heritage Foundation, the International Republican Institute and Cruz’s office did not respond to requests for comment.



For some interesting photos while they were in Washington:
https://twitter.com/kalliekriel

This an info dense article and well worth the longer read. See how many US officials do not believe apartheid was real or if it were, a good thing. Racism is growing, not dying.