Errol Langton’s ‘Afrikaner’ ‘farming’ family trades South Africa for Alabama
To Mr. Trump, South Africa is a cautionary tale for the United States.
In the 1990s, when one of his advisers mentioned a news item projecting that nonwhite people could become the majority in the United States, Mr. Trump shot back that there would be a revolution should that happen. “This isn’t going to become South Africa,” he said, according to a book about the president, “Confidence Man,” by Maggie Haberman, a New York Times reporter.
Years later, in August 2018, one of Mr. Trump’s favorite newscasters crystallized his views of South Africa. Tucker Carlson, a Fox News host at the time, said that South Africa’s president had begun “seizing land from his own citizens” under a new law that Mr. Carlson called “the definition of racism.”
“Racism is what our elites say they hate most — Donald Trump is a racist they say — but they pay no attention to this at all,” Mr. Carlson said.
Within hours of the newscast, Mr. Trump had fired off a tweet claiming that there was “large-scale killing” of white farmers in South Africa, and that he had directed the State Department to “closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations.”
“South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers,” he wrote, tagging the accounts of Fox News and Mr. Carlson. [Continue reading…]
Errol Langton, one of the so-called ‘refugees’ from South Africa who were welcomed to the U.S. by officials from the Trump administration this week, posted this video on YouTube in 2019:
Errol Langton’s LinkedIn “about”:
An accomplished Business Operations Manager/Product Developer with 10+ years of experience in the Finance, Retail, FMCG, Building and Information Technology arenas, providing bespoke technology solutions to drive optimal operations and service delivery, as well as enabling businesses with essential IT frameworks/solutions in order to scale and be more profitable.
Strong ideation and innovation capabilities with advanced problem-solving skills and business/commercial acumen, underpinned by proven expertise in technology enabled me to develop solutions for retail clients with notable success, increasing revenue from 2 million to 3.9 million ZAR in six years.
I would add significant value to any organisation seeking a people-centred Technical Manager to drive IT innovation and operations in line with corporate goals.
On TikTok, Langton says he is “two generations away from being actively Afrikaans…”
The Afrikaner family of nine looked around the small office space in Birmingham, Ala., feeling jet-lagged as they took in their new surroundings. Errol Langton, the patriarch of the white South African family, had spent much of his time so far with a pen in hand, signing required documents at a refugee coordinating office.
His granddaughter played with toy blocks on the floor. His oldest son watched over her. They had just eaten noodles. Later, they would spend time looking for apartments.
“Everybody still doesn’t believe that we’re actually standing here,” Mr. Langton, 48, said in an interview, about 40 hours after landing at Birmingham-Shuttlesworth International Airport. His family was among the first group of 59 South Africans who arrived in the United States this week, about three months after President Trump signed an executive order establishing refugee status for Afrikaners, the white ethnic minority that ruled during apartheid.
The president essentially halted all refugee admission programs on his first day in office. But he soon created an expedited pathway for Afrikaners, who claim they have been discriminated against and subjected to violence because of their race, or have reason to believe they will be.
Now, the Langton family has traded its South African hometown on the beach, Hibberdene, for a southern American city thousands of miles away. But Mr. Langton said he felt much safer already, as did his extended family who had joined him: his wife, son, three daughters, son-in-law and two grandchildren.
Mr. Langton has a brother in Birmingham. But he said another factor had also drawn his family to the state.
“South Africa is a very warm country, and Alabama is very much the same,” he said, seeking shade on a humid, hot afternoon outside the refugee office.
Since arriving in the United States on May 12, few Afrikaners have publicly spoken about leaving their country, their first impressions of America or what they make of the charged debate over their status as refugees. (While waiting at the airport in Johannesburg, the Afrikaners passengers said the U.S. embassy had instructed them not to speak with the news media.)
Republicans have welcomed them. Before leaving for a trip to the Middle East, Mr. Trump told reporters: “White farmers are being brutally killed, and the land is being confiscated in South Africa.” He added that the United States had “essentially extended citizenship” to the group of Afrikaners because he said they were victims of a genocide.
South African police data does not support the narrative of mass murder of white South Africans. And Mr. Trump’s focus on Afrikaners has brought just as much attention to the tens of thousands of people whom his administration has decided to keep out, including Afghans who helped U.S. soldiers during the war in Afghanistan.
In an hourlong interview with The New York Times, Mr. Langton said he had been trying to leave South Africa for 10 years and was grateful to President Trump. He said he had been threatened back home because he was “a white guy and a farmer,” and that his business had suffered financially because of the hatred directed at Afrikaners. [Continue reading…]
In a video that has gone viral on TikTok, a young woman named Geneve Gouws claims she was shocked to see footage of her former stepfather [Errol Langton] and his eight family members arriving in the US as Afrikaner “refugees”.
She said: “I’m completely shocked. What do they need protection from exactly? They’re not even Afrikaners.”
Gouws went on to claim that her former stepfather “lied” in his application to become a “refugee”.
She also believed that his claims of being a “victim of crime” were a result of domestic abuse incidents with her mother, whom he has since divorced.
“What lie do you have to tell to get to America?” she added. [Continue reading…]