White settlers in South Africa clamour for US resettlement after Trump order

CC™ PersPective

A deluge of more than 20,000 queries crashed the email server of the South African Chamber of Commerce in the United States after President Donald Trump said he would prioritize white South Africans in a refugee program, the chamber said Monday.

Trump and Pretoria are locked in a diplomatic row over a land expropriation act that Washington says will lead to the takeover of white-owned farms.

Trump, whose tycoon ally Elon Musk was born in South Africa, said on Friday the law signed in January would “enable the government of South Africa to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation”.

It allows the government, as a matter of public interest, to decide on expropriations without compensation — but only in exceptional circumstances.

The Afrikaners are descendants of European colonists, mainly of Dutch extraction, and are mainly engaged in farming in South Africa.

English and Afrikaner colonists ruled South Africa until 1994 under a brutal system in which the black majority were deprived of political and economic rights.

“Our email server crashed over the weekend just due to the sheer volume of inquiries we have received,” Neil Diamond, head of the South African Chamber of Commerce in the US (SACCUSA) told AFP in an email.

“Given the scale of interest, SACCUSA estimates that this figure could represent over 50,000 individuals looking to leave South Africa and seek resettlement in the United States,” he said.

– Trump order ‘flawed’ –

Diamond warned that this could lead to a skills shortage in South Africa that would impact agriculture and other sectors of the economy.

“If we look at the EB-5, which is an investor visa, you need roughly about 15 to 20 million South African Rand ($800,000 to $1 million) to be able to immigrate… What is alarming to us is the large volume of people that is interested in taking up this opportunity,” he said.

South Africa’s foreign ministry has said Trump’s order “lacks factual accuracy and fails to recognise South Africa’s profound and painful history of colonialism and apartheid.

“It is ironic that the executive order makes provision for refugee status in the US for a group in South Africa that remains amongst the most economically privileged, while vulnerable people in the US from other parts of the world are being deported and denied asylum despite real hardship,” it added.

Trump has asked Secretary of State Marco Rubio and Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem to “prioritize humanitarian relief, including admission and resettlement through the United States Refugee Admissions Program, for Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.”

There were no details of how the plan would be enacted as Trump halted refugee arrivals immediately after taking office.

Land ownership remains a contentious issue in South Africa, with most farmland still owned by white people three decades after the end of apartheid.

However, some Afrikaner farmers say the new land laws could lead to the confiscation of white-owned farms as carried out in neighbouring Zimbabwe.

The second largest party in South Africa’s national unity government, the Democratic Alliance, on Monday launched a court bid to annul the land law.

AFP

God bought my first aircraft not Living Faith offerings – Bishop Oyedepo

CC™ PersPective

The founder of the Living Faith Bible Church, Bishop David Oyedepo has declared that God bought him his first aircraft and not church offerings.

Speaking during his sermon at the church’s headquarters in Ota, Ogun State, Bishop Oyedepo dismissed rumours of using church funds to acquire his aircraft.

He, however, revealed that God miraculously provided the aircraft without any prior planning or prayer.

According to Bishop Oyedepo: “He bought the first aircraft without any prayer, without any idea that the aircraft was coming. He said it, he delivered it nobody had any pressure on his life. There was no pressure on the offering

“The offering didn’t buy it, God bought it. There was person contacted under heaven? No! God said it and I believe it and that settles it.

“It wasn’t an ambition, it was a unveiled divine agenda. If God asked me David when do you want that aircraft to be bought I would have said “God take it easy, take it easy, we are not near ready. Aircraft?

“Okay, let me find out first how much they sell it, he didn’t give us the room to find out. Not the aircraft that would go from here to Ilorin or Ogbomosho, we travel the whole of Africa with the aircraft.”

GLOBAL NEWS DESK

Atiku, Tambuwal, Imoke in closed-door meeting with Obasanjo in Abeokuta

CC™ Global News

Former Vice President Atiku Abubakar is currently in a closed-door meeting with his former boss, former President Olusegun Obasanjo in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital.

Atiku, who arrived Obasanjo’s residence, located on the premises of the Olusegun Obasanjo Presidential Library (OOPL) at exactly 12: 37p.m., was accompanied by the former governors of Sokoto and Cross Rivers State, Senator Aminu Tambuwa and Senator Liyel Imoke among other eminent political stalwarts from the northern region.

Upon arrival, Atiku alongside members of his entourage were received at the Obasanjo’s residence by the elder statesman, Oyewole Fasawe, before they all went straight into a private meeting with Obasanjo who had been waiting for his visitors.

GLOBAL NEWS DESK

The Deception of AfriForum as Julius Malema debunks the Elon Musk engineered misinformation troll against majority African rule in South Africa

CC™ VideoSpective

CREDITS: WE LOVE AFRICA

Unchristian Trump unveils ‘anti-Christian bias’ Task Force

CC™ Politico

US President Donald Trump announced Thursday the creation of a task force to “eradicate anti-Christian bias” in government, intensifying a right-wing crackdown since returning to power.

The Republican billionaire said he was putting new Attorney General Pam Bondi at the head of the force to end “persecution” of the majority religion of the United States.

Trump said its mission would be to “immediately halt all forms of anti-Christian targeting and discrimination” in the Department of Justice, the Internal Revenue Service, the FBI and other government agencies.

He also said it would prosecute “anti-Christian violence and vandalism in our society.”

“We will protect Christians in our schools, in our military and our government, in our workplaces, hospitals and in our public squares,” Trump told a national prayer breakfast at a Washington hotel.

He also announced the creation of a “White House faith office” led by his spiritual advisor, the televangelist Paula White.

The announcements came amid a wider purge of the federal government at the start of Trump’s second term.

Trump has unveiled a slew of orders backing a conservative agenda, including several targeting diversity programs and transgender people.

Despite a criminal conviction for hush money payments in a porn star scandal and sexual assault allegations, Trump has long made himself a champion of right-wing Christians.

Trump’s cabinet contains several members with links to Christian nationalists, including Vice President JD Vance and Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth.

And while Trump is not seen as particularly religious, he said he had become more so after surviving an assassination attempt at an election rally in June 2024 in Butler, Pennsylvania.

“It changed something in me, I feel even stronger. I believed in God, but I feel much more strongly about it,” Trump told a separate prayer breakfast at the US Capitol on Thursday.

“We have to bring religion back.”

Trump said in his inauguration speech on January 20, referring to the assassination attempt, that he had been “saved by God to Make America Great Again.”

ASSOCIATED PRESS

WHY EUROPE DESPERATELY WANTS THE DANGOTE REFINERY TO FAIL

CC™ VideoSpective

US TECH GIANT IBM EXITS NIGERIA

CC™ TechSpot

American technology company, International Business Machines (IBM), has exited the Nigerian economic space.

The company announced that it is also leaving other African countries like Ghana, while it transfers its operations to a third-party company.

IBM is one of the latest international companies to exit the Nigerian economic space in recent times. In 2024, Guinness left, and Meta, the internet giant, and Microsoft reduced their physical presence in the country, scaling back their office spaces and transitioning to desk sharing for workers.

Under this new agreement, IBM will transfer its regional functions to MIBB, a subsidiary of Midis Group, a multinational IT and telecommunications conglomerate operating across Europe, the Middle East, and Africa.

The company said in a statement, “MIBB will market and sell IBM products and services in 36 African countries, thereby giving MIBB’s sales network direct access to IBM products, services, and support, further boosting innovation and growth in the region.”

The company’s presence in Nigeria spans over 50 years, but this marks the twilight of the present period.

In the 1960s, IBM helped to set up an educational centre at the University of Ibadan, aiding in building digital capacity.

The company was integral to the growth of the technology landscape, providing infrastructure and consulting services to industries such as education, banking, telecommunications, oil and gas, and government.

GLOBAL TECH DESK

South Africa gives Taiwan deadline to leave Pretoria

CC™ Global News

The South African government has given Taiwan March deadline to relocate the island’s de facto embassy outside of the capital city Pretoria.

The Taiwanese Foreign Ministry said this, blaming Chinese pressure for the move.

South Africa severed official diplomatic ties with Taiwan in 1997 and only maintains formal and very close relations with China, which views the democratically governed island as Chinese territory with no right to the trappings of a state.

In a statement, Taiwan’s Foreign Ministry said South Africa’s government had sent a letter in January demanding the de facto Taiwanese embassy leave Pretoria before the end of March and “even be renamed as a trade office”.

China’s foreign ministry said South Africa was a “good friend and partner” of China, and the country was doing exactly what it should when it comes to upholding the “one China principle” which states Taiwan is part of China.

“Taiwan independence does not enjoy popular support, and will fail,” the ministry said in a statement to Reuters.

South Africa made a request last year for what is called the Taipei Liaison Office to leave Pretoria.

A spokesperson for the South Africa’s foreign ministry told Reuters “our department is coordinating with the Taipei liaison office regarding administrative matters related to accurately representing its diplomatic classification in South Africa.

China is South Africa’s largest trading partner globally and one with which it is looking to expand cooperation in areas such as renewable energy.

Taiwan’s government rejects China’s sovereignty claims and says it has a right to forge ties with other countries.

Taiwan only has formal diplomatic ties with 12 countries, and in Africa it only has a single ally left, Eswatini, which is almost surrounded by South Africa.

NEWSDESK

Who Are The Yoruba People?

CC™ VideoSpective

The Original Queen of Sheba & Yoruba History

CC™ VideoSpective

CREDITS - YORUBA ABRAHAMIC