Ramaphosa Says Afrikaners Leaving Aren't Refugees: 'we've Never Driven Colonisers Out'

President Cyril Ramaphosa says the 49 Afrikaners who have left South Africa for the United States US do not fit the definition of refugees.

The group, who left the country on a chartered flight on Sunday 11 May, are the first to take up US President Donald Trumps offer of resettlement based on widely discredited claims of discrimination.

Speaking at the African CEO Forum in Ivory Coast on Monday 12 May, Ramaphosa said South Africa has raised its concerns with the Trump administration on the matter.

Those people who are being enticed to go to the US do not fit the definition of a refugee. A refugee is someone who has to leave their country out of fear of political persecution, religious persecution or economic persecution, and they dont fit that bill. They dont fit that description, he said.

I had a conversation with President Trump on the phone. I told him, what you have been told by those people who are opposed to transformation back home in South Africa is not true.

The President said South Africa is following the late President Nelson Mandela and the late African National Congress ANC leader Oliver Tambos teachings on building a united nation.

"We are the only country on the continent where the colonisers came to stay, and we have never driven them out of our country. They are staying and they are making great progress, Ramaphosa added.

Its a fringe grouping, which does not have a lot of support, that is anti-transformation and anti-change.

"Those people who have fled are not being persecuted. They are not being hounded. They are not being treated badly. They are leaving ostensibly because they dont want to embrace the changes that are taking place in our country, in accordance with our Constitution.

He vowed to continue implementing South Africas constitutional architecture, apparently referring to transformation laws such as the Expropriation Act and the Basic Education Laws Amendment BELA Act.