Illustrative image: Newly arrived Afrikaner ‘refugees’ in the US. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images) | Statue of Liberty silhouette and US flag. (Photo: iStock) | Asylum seekers. (Photo: iStock) 
What’s the background here?
In August, Daily Maverick broke the story of how the US State Department was applying for visas for about 30 Kenyans to come to South Africa to assist with processing Afrikaners who were applying for “refugee” status in the US.
Why did they have to be Kenyan?
The refugee programme is coordinated by the Resettlement Support Centre (RSC) Africa, which is operated by Church World Service out of Nairobi, Kenya.
In addition, though this has not been officially confirmed, a government official told Daily Maverick that it is believed that Kenyans were thought more suitable to carry out this particular task because South Africans might harbour animosity towards the applicants — who are being granted “refugee” status premised on a false claim of “white genocide” in SA.
Church World Service did not respond to Daily Maverick’s request for comment on Wednesday.
What visas did they originally apply for?
We reported that the Department of Home Affairs had received applications in late July for 30 Kenyans to enter on volunteer visas.
But, to qualify for a volunteer visa, the applicants would not have been able to receive any paid remuneration for the work they would do in South Africa — which was clearly not going to be the case.
The Department of Home Affairs on Wednesday confirmed that these visa applications were “lawfully declined”.
The Kenyans would also not have qualified for work visas, which require a job offer from a South African employer, not a foreign entity. In addition, it could hardly have been claimed that the Kenyans were needed on account of possessing scarce skills that South Africans did not, since the work they were carrying out was “fairly low-grade clerical work”, to quote a government official.
Daily Maverick also understands that there was significant irritation within the Cabinet at the request to assist with a “refugee” programme that the government considers ludicrous, so nobody was about to bend the law to help the Americans here.
/file/attachments/orphans/GettyImages-2214729729_605854.jpg "An Omni Air International charter flight carrying ‘refugees’ from South Africa to the US lands at Washington Dulles International Airport on 12 May. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)")
So did the Kenyans end up coming?
It would appear so, because this was the premise of the raid conducted on a Johannesburg refugee processing centre on Tuesday.
“The operation followed after intelligence reports indicated that a number of Kenyan nationals had recently entered South Africa on tourist visas and had illegally taken up work at a centre processing the applications of so-called refugees to the United States,” stated the Department of Home Affairs.
“During the operation, seven Kenyan nationals were discovered engaging in work despite only being in possession of tourist visas, in clear violation of their conditions of entry into the country. They were arrested and issued with deportation orders, and will be prohibited from entering South Africa again for a five-year period.”
Do we know anything about how this went down behind the scenes?
A government official told Daily Maverick they believed Kenyans from the original list of 30 visa applicants had been coming to South Africa in batches, all on 90-day tourist visas, to carry out the work.
They appear to have been leaving when the three-month visa term is up, to be replaced by others: the seven Kenyans arrested on Tuesday had return flights booked.
The Kenyans were originally working out of a residential site in Pretoria, the official said, but had to move to Johannesburg when a bigger site was required.
When Home Affairs officials and the police arrived at the centre on Tuesday and started interviewing workers, US officials apparently demanded that they stop. The US officials also tried to claim that the workers could not be arrested. (The US embassy did not respond to Daily Maverick’s request for comment on Wednesday.)
Home Affairs and the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (Dirco) have clearly taken a dim view of the US officials’ attempts to intervene, because the Home Affairs statement on the raid concluded: “The presence of foreign officials apparently coordinating with undocumented workers naturally raises serious questions about intent and diplomatic protocol.”
It’s safe to say the South African government is not happy about the apparent belief on the part of the Americans that immigration laws could be flouted to carry out a US project that the government considers to be bogus.
Social media is awash with theories that this is an attempt to sabotage the refugee programme. Is there any truth to this?
Colonel Chris Wyatt, a retired US Army official who is inexplicably invested in the Afrikaner “refugee” programme, posted a video on his social media channels which seemed to insinuate that the real purpose of the raid was to gather information about the “refugee” applicants and intimidate them from applying.
There is no evidence that this is the case, since the South African government has not attempted to stop any of the estimated 400 South Africans who had left for the US under the “refugee” programme by the end of October.
Indeed, the major stumbling block to the programme thus far has seemed to be applicants getting cold feet when the opportunity to leave is presented: City Press reported in October that in one week the US government had booked 50 seats for “refugees” on a flight, but only three turned up for it.
Home Affairs says the raid was “routine” and “lawful”, and in keeping with a crackdown on immigration violations.
“No US officials were arrested in the process, the operation was not conducted at a diplomatic site, and no members of the public or prospective ‘refugees’ were harassed,” its statement read.
/file/attachments/orphans/GettyImages-2214743789_399305.jpg "Newly arrived Afrikaner ‘refugees’ wait to hear welcome statements from US government officials in a hangar at Atlantic Aviation Dulles in Washington, DC, on 12 May. (Photo: Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)")
What happens next?
This incident will have done nothing to improve already icy diplomatic relations between the US and South Africa — on both sides.
In a statement sent to US publications, the US State Department said it was “seeking immediate clarification from the South African government” on the issue and expected “full cooperation and accountability”.
It added: “Interfering in our refugee operations is unacceptable.”
However, the South African government clearly isn’t taking this lying down either.
The Home Affairs statement said that Dirco would initiate “formal diplomatic engagements with both the United States and Kenya to resolve this matter”.
A government official told Daily Maverick that it would be typical diplomatic practice in cases like this for the most senior member of the US embassy in Pretoria to be summoned for a “demarche” — essentially, a diplomatic smackdown. Watch this space. DM