Afrikaner ‘refugee’ hails America’s all work and no maid culture

Three months on, one of the first ‘persecuted’ white South Africans resettled in the US has praised citizens’ work ethic

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Kate Bartlett, Johannesburg

Sunday August 24 2025, 7.25pm BST, The Times

Charl Kleinhaus, left, with his grandson, son and daughter. Kleinhaus, a Trump supporter, was part of the first group of 59 Afrikaners to be flown to the US in May

If there’s one thing that has really struck Charl Kleinhaus three months into his new life as an Afrikaner “refugee” in the US, it is the American work ethic — and the lack of cheap labour.

“The farmers here work. I’ve not seen any farm owner who works like American farmers,” Kleinhaus said in a video shared on the Amerikaners Facebook page, a group set up to share information about resettling in the US.

“They really, really work hard, until ten, eleven o’clock at night, early in the morning they start. There’s no hands here that you whistle to come sweep the floors, or wash the tractor … the farmer does it all himself,” Kleinhaus said.

Kleinhaus and his family at a US diner

Kleinhaus added: “There’s no kitchen lady you call to sweep the house, or clean the house, or stuff like that. You do the work yourself.” He said the upside of this was that the maid could not steal from you. “Things at your house don’t disappear. Your sugar doesn’t go away, your coffee doesn’t go away.”

Kleinhaus was speaking with Colonel Chris Wyatt, who says he is a retired US army colonel with experience in Africa. He has become a champion of the “Amerikaners” and a kind of guru to the refugees on all things American.

President Trump has claimed white-minority Afrikaners are being persecuted in South Africa, which the government there denies.

Kleinhaus, a Trump supporter, was part of the first group of 59 Afrikaners to be flown to the US in May. He said shortly after landing that he had run a failed quarry business in Limpopo province and had been “threatened” by black people in the area claiming it belonged to them.

Broken machinery at Kleinhaus’s quarry that he says was ransacked

• Afrikaners seeking refuge in US ‘are the ones who failed at farming’

The claims are difficult to verify but proved sufficient for the US government. The 46-year-old got sent to Buffalo, New York, with his son, daughter and grandson. He told the Times in May he had a case worker, was in the process of applying for his social security card and hoped to soon start looking for work.

But he left the assistance programme after eight days. He was unhappy with having been sent to Buffalo, which is not a farming area, and made contact though the Afrikaner grapevine with a farmer in South Dakota. The farmer flew Kleinhaus and his family out and has put them up in a house on the farm.

Wyatt also talked to another member of the first group of arrivals, Errol Langton, who acknowledged he had “been roasted in South Africa” because he was not a farmer but an IT worker. He is also not Afrikaans.

Langton said it had not all been smooth sailing in the US. “The reality is that we’re resetting our entire lives … there are things that are a little bit difficult, there are some frustrations,” he said, adding that life was expensive in the US.

Back in South Africa, many on the Amerikaners group are undeterred. The group’s Facebook page is full of posts asking for advice on what to say if they get an interview with the US consulate, while others who have applied but not heard back are waiting anxiously.

Afrikaners who arrived at Dulles international airport in May

JULIA DEMAREE NIKHINSON/AP

• Trump’s beloved Afrikaners now face a real threat — from him

It is understood that the refugee programme is still going ahead, although only one other group has arrived in the US since the first 59.

Reuters reported this month that the Trump administration was considering a 40,000-person cap on refugee admissions this year — of which about 30,000 will be Afrikaners.

The US Department of State has outsourced the processing of South Africans seeking refugee status to the Resettlement Support Centre, a Nairobi-based group that functions under the umbrella body of Church World Service, a US faith-based organisation that works with refugees.

Neither the Department of State nor the Church World Service responded to requests for comment.

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Yes, no kitchen lady or garden helper...also no pestering and no homicidal mobs of haters...peace and quiet.

BB

Where did you get this article from? It is slanted. Due to inflation very few middle clas speople in SA can afford domestic orkers in SA. That generation has gone and is not coming back. I used to ahve a domestic servant coming to work for me. Now I have one that comes in every 14 days not ebcause she is essential - bt ebcaue I want to help her financially. She only work for 4 hours on the days she comes in and I pay her R300 for those 4 hours.

Secondly by 1994 there were 80 000 farm owners and their families living on farms - now it is down to 30 000 people. The murder rate per 100 000 people were the higest rate of any group in SA. at onme stae it was over 30 people per 100 000 which is the emasure on whcih murder rates are based Universally. Farming is the most dangerous occupation in SA, Farmers cannot go anywhere on the farm without being armed. To deny that situation is just plain BS, In most provinces in South Africa farm homes had electric fences around homes with very little help because the electiricity are cut through copper theft.

What was never known is that USA Farmers recruited White South Africans as farm workers because they were hard-working and h onest and some of them ended up as farm amnagers for owners, There were thousands of such cases in the USA at any given time.

In fact there are still farm murders - but the farmers themselves develop a communication system that alert them on farm attacks as a defense system because there was zero or near to zero action on the aprt of he Police. The farmers when alerted functions a a group to investigate cases and in some cases saved the lives of enighbours under attack. The number of attackes decreased because of the fact that there are nw less targets living on farms and because of their own protection system.

In the meeting between Trump and Ramaphosa Ruprt - himself a armer - pleaded with Trump to provide a communciation system to be isntalled in police offices and would sabve the lives of farmers and their families, But it si not only White farmers and theirfamilies that ws under attack - farmers of all races are under attack and domestic employees are also murdered,

A nother lie is that Tump banned migration to the USA. What he abnned and tried tos top is entry into the USA and living in the USA illegally. White people in SA was not in that category of uillegal entries, Trump realizes that ere are still well-qualified people coming out of SA and encourages that as a source of legal immigation. Musk and Soong - two of the richest people in the USA had an SA background and that enhance the trust Trump developed to prefer South Africans on all levels to enter the USA legally. An example si one of Albert Luthili's granddaughters ad h r hsband had Unversity degrees of the University of Moscow and worrked and lived int he USA legally as top medical staff wrking for USA research specialists.

If I was ounger I would have been first in teh que to leave SA - where everybody - inclusing the Blcks are poorer than they were in 1994 and that includes the Blacks. That is why corrupt Government similar to that in tthe case o the Bush, Obama and Biden Presidencies have been rejected by the USA voters and it is continuing. . ,

Where did you get this article from?

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Well it was garbage spreading. If they want the real info they could have got it from real sources and not from an individual who claim they enjoy life in the USA because they do not have a "maid culture" - whateve that emans - in the real world most people in SA of all races have become poorer than they were in 1994 due to a corrupt system that benefit a few and undermine living conditions of the vast majoity of people.

They should also ask another question - why is support for the ANC dropping all the time and write an article on that.