It is a moral obscenity. It is said by some that white Afrikaners in South Africa are the victims of genocide, but there is no data to support the claim. It is said that the cohort of Afrikaners coming to America are refugees, but there are indications that they are being recruited. There are millions of people across the world who are living in overcrowded and squalid refugee camps, some for years, and are trapped between their fear of returning home because of certain ethnic or political violence; and the slim hope of migrating to America that for now is completely in vain. Since January 20 of this year, refugee resettlement agencies and programs in this country have been shuttered. Except – for Afrikaners coming from South Africa. At the same time, funds from USAID have been cut off to the PEPFAR program in South Africa, which provides medication and medical assistance to people with HIV/AIDS. An estimated one million people could die over the next ten years due to the closing of the program, 130,000 of them children. It is a moral obscenity.
In 1948, Afrikaners won the national election in South Africa (only white people were allowed to vote). They were a numerical minority of the population (about 10%; the total white population was about 20% of the country) but owned a large majority of the land. They immediately set up the system of apartheid, which reinforced their power and relegated black people to near slave status. Black people were forced into townships or Bantustans and required to carry passes whenever they ventured out of their tightly controlled areas. When apartheid ended in 1994, and black people were given the right to vote and assume leadership, a systemic shift began to take place, part of which was a deliberate and legal process to adjudicate the equitable distribution of the land. That process continues.
Violent crime has been a decades-old scourge across the country. I could see its impact when I visited South Africa earlier this year. Virtually every home, condo association and apartment complex had an elaborate security system involving barbed wire and cameras; many had security gates and some had human or canine guards – or both. The murder rate in South Africa is much higher than in the United States, but the allegation that white farmers are being targeted is simply not true. The entire country struggles with violence, which affects the black population at a much higher rate than the Afrikaner farmers. The wild accusation of genocide is a moral obscenity, carried out with profound and blatant dishonesty.
All that said, there is a potential moral flaw in making a passionate point, as I have just done, which is to sit, or even bask, in the righteousness of having made it. It is one thing to make a point, which I and so many of us are doing as the recklessness and cruelty of the Trump Administration’s policies continue to roll out at a breathtaking pace. It is something else to make a difference. Making a difference invariably involves some cost – of labor, funding, or favor. Making a difference requires moving beyond words to action.
A difference is being made by The Presiding Bishop of the Episcopal Church, the Most Reverend Sean W. Rowe. While raising a point on the issue of “refugees” from South Africa in a recent letter to members of the Episcopal Church, he recounted that the church’s longstanding refugee resettlement program has essentially shut down since January 20 because vetted refugees are now being denied entry into the US; and funding for resettling refugees who have already arrived has become uncertain. In the last two weeks, the federal government has directed the church to resettle white Afrikaners from South Africa. The combination of suddenly granting refugee status to Afrikaners who are not under threat, and withdrawing the possibility of resettlement for the countless number of people who are, has led the church to end its relationship with the federal government. “We are not able to take this step”, the Presiding Bishop wrote, which is a profound moral statement. And a costly one. Over the years the Episcopal Migration Ministries has received $50 million annually to resettle refugees in this country. That money is now gone. And the blowback from some quarters on the Presiding Bishop’s letter has been vicious and fierce. We are living in a time when any moral statement or position is immediately being refracted by conflict entrepreneurs as political grandstanding. Increasingly, morality in this country is being determined solely by those who sit in positions of power, which is yet another moral obscenity.
There are growing indications that the Trump Administration regards itself as the primary authority on morality, and once determined (usually on the basis of aggrandizing more power) morality is being wielded as a weapon. Presiding Bishop Rowe has stood up to this misuse of the concept of morality. He has moved beyond making a point to seeking to make a difference.
We should do the same. The cost may be high, but morality hangs in the balance.
