A charter plane carrying 59 white South Africans arrived at Dulles International Airport outside Washington, DC, on Monday. For these 59 people, including families and children, the United States is their new home.

US President Donald Trump himself had fast-tracked their arrival.

Back in February, he had announced a new program to take in refugees from South Africa who, in his view, were suffering from racist policies.

While many refugees wait years before they are approved to travel to the United States, the Afrikaners who arrived on Monday were admitted in under three months.

On Monday, Trump said he was admitting these people as refugees because of a "genocide that's taking place." He also said that in post-apartheid South Africa, white farmers are "being killed."

Trump was responding to a new law signed by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in January that regulates the expropriation of private property and possible compensation.

"The idea that white farmers feel that their land is under threat is wrong on every level," Tessa Dooms, director of the Rivonia Circle think tank in Johannesburg, told DW.

"When they talk about white genocide, there is a longstanding narrative that has been built over the last 15 years amongst Afrikaner communities that farmers who are mainly white have been targeted specifically for crime and have been murdered specifically. That is untrue," she added.

"The high murder rate in South Africa could also affect white South Africans as part of society, but Black South Africans, mostly young men, are murdered more frequently," Dooms said. "With the high level of........

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