Andrew Veitch moved to California in 2003 after being held up at gunpoint in South Africa. Now, after nearly two decades in the United States, he says he sees greater risks in the U.S. and plans to return to South Africa later this year. Veitch, 53, pointed to mass shootings in public places and incidents involving U.S. immigration officers as part of his decision.
"People are being shot in broad daylight. American citizens are being shot and killed," Veitch said. "I don’t want to live in a place like this."
Veitch’s judgment comes against a background of conflicting narratives about the safety and treatment of white South Africans. President Donald Trump and some officials in his administration have asserted that the white minority faces persecution under the Black majority-led government in Pretoria. South African authorities, however, say there is no evidence of systematic discrimination or persecution of whites.
The Trump administration has moved to expand a refugee programme that targets white South Africans, particularly Afrikaners, the descendants of Dutch settlers. Since the programme began in May 2025, about 3,500 South Africans have entered the United States as refugees. Applicants interviewed by officials and organisations said they were motivated by accounts of racially motivated crime and by employment equity policies that aim to prefer non-white candidates to redress decades of white minority rule.
At the same time, Pretoria has taken steps to make it easier for emigrants to restore South African citizenship. An online portal launched by the government in November allows those who lost citizenship under a 1995 law to check their status; 12,000 people have used the portal so far. Home Affairs Minister Leon Schreiber said 1,000 people had formally reclaimed citizenship and that he expected the number to grow as the programme expands.
"There is definitely a sense of optimism for South Africans abroad," Schreiber said. He is a member of the Democratic Alliance, the white-led party that has ruled in coalition with the African National Congress since 2024, and is himself a returnee who spent time in the U.S. and Germany before moving back in 2019.
Official statistics underscore that return flows are a long-standing phenomenon. The latest official figures cited show that almost 15,000 white South Africans returned in 2022. A Stats SA analysis found that 28,000 people overall returned in 2022, of whom 52.9% - about 14,800 - were white. Over a broader period, Stats SA has estimated a net outward flow of roughly half a million whites since 2001, including 95,000 between 2021 and 2026.
Beyond formal reclamation of citizenship, recruitment agencies and returnee networks report rising interest. Two relocation firms that assist expats said recent inquiries had jumped. Anton van Heerden, chief executive of employment agency DNA Employer of Record, reported a 70% increase in inquiries from white South Africans seeking to return over the past six months. Angel Jones, chief executive of Johannesburg-based recruitment firm HomecomingEx, said inquiries had risen by about 30% since 2024.
Reuters spoke with 10 South Africans who had either returned or were planning to do so - seven from Europe and three from the United States. They and members of an online "Return to South Africa" community with roughly 25,000 members cited reasons including proximity to family, lower living costs and political instability overseas.
Not every returnee framed the move in terms of danger or policy grievances. Naomi Saphire, who had lived in the United States for two decades, said a holiday visit convinced her she wanted her children to grow up in South Africa. She left North Carolina last year for a coastal town in the Western Cape.
"My heart is just full of gratefulness to be here," Saphire said from her home in Plettenberg Bay. "The U.S. has been really good to me (but) I just felt like I was depriving my kids of this life."
Economic and public services considerations also feature in return narratives. Some returnees said daily power outages had largely stopped compared with earlier periods, and many described a better overall quality of life in areas where they were settled. Thirty-eight-year-old engineer Eugene Jansen, who returned with his wife and two children from the Netherlands in December, said those he knew felt the country was improving.
"The opinion is that the country is improving," Jansen said.
Labour market disparities and crime statistics present a mixed picture. According to figures from Stats SA cited in these accounts, the unemployment rate stands at 35% for Black South Africans and 8% for white South Africans. Police data referenced in reporting shows that farm murders, a focal point of political attention, have claimed more Black victims than white victims.
Separate reporting has also examined claims used to justify fears of persecution. It found that photographs and video clips cited by proponents of the persecution narrative were sometimes taken out of context or misrepresented.
Returnees who retain overseas jobs have often used remote work to keep their positions while living in South Africa. Van Heerden noted that many professionals who can afford private security measures create a de facto safer environment at home than they perceive in some northern hemisphere locations.
"If you can afford to live in a safe environment, you can have a much better life than I think in most places in the northern hemisphere," Van Heerden said.
While administrative indicators and anecdotal accounts point to rising interest among white emigrants to reclaim South African citizenship or to relocate back, the overall numbers remain a fraction of South Africans abroad. The online portal users and the figures on returnees documented for 2022 illustrate only a slice of broader migratory patterns that have unfolded since the end of white minority rule in 1994, when many left for a variety of reasons including crime and employment challenges.
As returns continue, the debate between international actors who portray white South Africans as persecuted and South African officials who reject that framing is likely to persist. For now, a mix of family ties, economic considerations, perceived improvements in public services and the flexibility of remote work are shaping who comes back and why.