'We Are the Good Guys’: SA artists take a different Afrikaner story to the US - EWN

According to Donald Trump, white Afrikaners in South Africa are a persecuted people, experiencing a genocide.

And it was these beliefs that led the United States to offer Afrikaners refuge under a special resettlement program.

Just this week, the Trump administration announced it is planning to welcome thousands more white Afrikaners as refugees over the next year.

But as one narrative about South Africa and white Afrikaners is peddled in Washington, a group of South African artists is offering another perspective.

We Are the Good Guys is an exhibition featuring 18 artists and explores violence, fear, segregation, identity, grief and South Africa’s complex history.

Speaking to 702’s Bongani Bingwa, curator Johan Stegmann said even the exhibition’s title was deliberately provocative.

“Being the good guys must be the most widely held belief in the world.”

The exhibition arrives as Lex Libertas prepares to display 3,000 white crosses on Washington’s National Mall to commemorate people killed in farm attacks.

"There are two different versions of the white Afrikaner experience being told or being presented to the public and to the government of America in Washington, D.C." said Stegman.

Stegman did not dispute that farm murders were a serious issue, but he rejected the idea that violence against Afrikaners is separate from or greater than the crime and violence affecting all South Africans.

“Yes, there are terrible farm murders, but everyone in South Africa is struggling with violence, with crime, with inequality.”