'We don't want to move,' white South Africans say to Trump's offer

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00:00U.S. President Donald Trump's offer to take in white South Africans as refugees fleeing

00:05persecution may not spur quite the rush he anticipated.

00:10An executive order he signed on Friday provided for resettlement in the U.S. of, quote, Afrikaners

00:15in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination as refugees.

00:20Afrikaners are mostly white South African descendants of Dutch and French settlers,

00:24some tracing back their roots in the country to the 17th century, but it's not clear

00:27they want to flee the place they've called home for hundreds of years.

00:42That was the response from Neville van der Merwe, a white 78-year-old pensioner living

00:46in Cape Town.

00:48And he had this to say about Trump cutting off aid to his country.

01:00Trump is pushing back against a law signed last month by President Cyril Ramaphosa aimed

01:04at addressing the country's unequal land ownership.

01:07White South Africans make up less than a tenth of the country's population, but a legacy

01:11of the racist apartheid government left three quarters of privately owned land in the hands

01:15of the white minority.

01:17Over three and a half million black people were forced from their homes.

01:20The new law makes it easier for the state to expropriate land for what it says is the

01:23public interest.

01:28Ramaphosa's governing African National Congress, or ANC, has defended the measure and accused

01:33Trump of amplifying misinformation propagated by AfriForum, an Afrikaner-led group.

01:38And even that group, which lobbied Trump's previous administration on their cause, said

01:42it was not taking up his offer.

01:44We have to stay categorically.

01:48We don't want to move elsewhere.

01:50That's AfriForum CEO Kallie Creel speaking on Saturday.

01:54Alongside Creel was Philip Buys, who chairs the Solidarity Trade Union, a group that says

01:59it represents 600,000 Afrikaner families.

02:02We might disagree with the ANC, but we love the country.

02:07As in any community, there are individuals who wish to immigrate.

02:11But the repatriation of Afrikaners as refugees is not a solution for us.

02:18We want to build a future in South Africa.

02:21Some said they appreciated Trump's gesture.

02:23Werner van Niekerk is a carpenter in Bothezig.

02:25I think it's a very nice gesture from Donald Trump to offer us asylum over there.

02:31He did not say whether he planned to take up the offer.