A specially chartered plane departed from Johannesburg on Sunday and is expected to arrive in Washington on Monday morning, local time, reports CBS News.
The group of South African "refugees" consists mainly of families with small children, but also younger couples and some older individuals.
According to the White House's Vice Chief of Staff Stephen Miller, the flight is the first of many.
This is race-based persecution, Miller claimed on Friday, according to AP.
Tens of thousands of Africans have expressed interest in applying for refugee status in the US. This comes after President Donald Trump accused South Africa of racial discrimination, among other things claiming that the government in Pretoria seizes land from whites.
The South African government has consistently denied the allegations.
Ideological organizations are criticizing the US for prioritizing white South Africans over people fleeing war and natural disasters, reports AP. The White House has accelerated the Africans' applications and at the same time stopped refugee arrivals from, among others, Iraq and countries in Africa south of the Sahara.
The Africans, descendants of settlers from France, make up around 2.7 million of South Africa's 62 million large population. According to the South African government, they are among the most economically privileged in the heavily segregated country.
The word "apartheid" comes from the Afrikaans language and means "separation".
South Africa adopted apartheid as a political system in 1948, when the Nationalist Party came to power. Under the very brutal system, non-white inhabitants were subjected to extensive and systematic racism.
The population was divided into whites, blacks, Asians, and colored (of mixed origin). Many blacks were placed in reserves, so-called "homelands".
The UN General Assembly condemned South Africa on several occasions and emphasized that apartheid was a crime against humanity.
In practice, apartheid was more or less abolished in 1990. The resistance movement ANC's leader Nelson Mandela was released then after 27 years in prison. After the country's first democratic election in 1994, Mandela became South Africa's leader.
Source: Landguiden/UI
