The father of tech billionaire Elon Musk is working on a project to provide refugee status in Russia for South African farmers, he has told AFP, in a project similar to one by the US government

The initiative would resettle 50 families from the white Afrikaans minority, descendants of the first Dutch settlers, according to a Russian official

The same group of South Africans have been offered refugee status by the government of US President Donald Trump, which has falsely claimed they face persecution under the post-apartheid government

Nearly 5,000 white Afrikaners have entered the United States as refugees since Trump took office in January last year and all but halted refugee programmes for every other group

The US programme has angered the South African government which denies any discrimination

Contacted by AFP by telephone on Tuesday, Errol Musk told AFP from Moscow: “It’s about providing refugee status to South African farmers.”

Musk, who regularly visits Russia and attended an April 12 Orthodox Easter mass in Moscow in the presence of President Vladimir Putin, did not give details of the project

In an interview with Russian media Gubernia 33, he justified the project by claiming white Afrikaner farmers were being targeted for murder, allegations strongly denied in South Africa[…]
The governor of the Vladimir region which borders the Moscow region, Aleksandr Avdeyev, said last week that he had discussed the project with Musk

“We discussed the development of agriculture and the prospects for settling 50 Dutch-origin families from South Africa,” he said on Telegram