By: John JP Lenga
Two stories landed on my desk this week. They do not appear to be connected. One is about Afrikaners who tried to become refugees in America. The other is about farms that were supposed to feed Namibia.
The Refugee Myth
In February 2025, a narrative began to circulate. White South Africans were facing genocide. They were being persecuted. They needed refuge. And America was opening its doors to them.
By the time the programme wound down, more than 13,000 Afrikaners had applied for refugee status with the United States. It was the single largest refugee intake in the world during that period.
Of the 7,730 refugees admitted to the US between November 2025 and June 2026, all but three were South African. The remaining three were Afghan.
This was not a small operation. This was a policy priority.
Then the letters began to arrive.
Hundreds of applicants received correspondence from US Citizenship and Immigration Services. The language was clinical: “Following review, the USCIS found your application to be ineligible for continued processing for resettlement to the United States at this time. This cannot be appealed.”
No reason. No process. No appeal.
These were people who had already sold everything. They had resigned from jobs. They had sold homes.
They had completed vaccination courses and orientation programmes. Some had already said goodbye to family. Then they were told, without explanation, that the door was closed.
Some were rejected for other reasons. One applicant, aged 67, admitted to American investigators that he had shot a Black South African in 1995. Another had a 2014 trespassing conviction.
One couple was told that their inability to speak Afrikaans put them at a disadvantage during screening, which resulted in their rejection. A family who had been accepted and had relocated are reportedly unable to return to the United States after travelling back to South Africa for medical care.
And then, the return migration began. South Africa’s Home Affairs Minister, Leon Schreiber, confirmed that 1,000 people had reclaimed their South African citizenship. Another 12,000 were checking their eligibility to do the same.
If the claim was genocide, why were thousands checking whether they could go back?
How Narratives Get Made
The “white genocide” narrative did not invent itself. It was manufactured, amplified, and sold to ordinary people. And we know exactly how that works, because it has been done before.
Cambridge Analytica was a British data analytics firm.
It harvested personal data from millions of Facebook users without consent, built psychological profiles, and used those profiles to target voters with micro-targeted political messaging.
Its parent company was SCL Group, a British strategic communications firm that described its business as “data-driven behavioural change.”
SCL did not only work in elections. It was paid more than £150,000 by the UK government to research “behaviour” in conflict zones. Its work included reports on Libya after the fall of Gaddafi, and Pakistan in 2008.
It also reportedly did similar work for the US government in Afghanistan and Iraq.
SCL provided psychological analyses of the citizenry in Libya under Gaddafi.
Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy has since been charged over allegations that he received up to €50 million towards his 2007 election campaign from Gaddafi’s regime. Julian Assange has stated that Hillary Clinton was “the key figure in the destruction of the Libyan state.”
This is the kind of information that Assange suffered for.
The mechanism is not complicated.
Cambridge Analytica did not create division. It exploited existing division. It identified what people already feared, already believed, already wanted to hear, and it amplified those narratives until they became real.
The “white genocide” narrative works the same way. It tells a story that some people want to believe. It offers a villain and a victim. It speaks to fear. And it is not true.
The Cost of Empty Granaries
While we were watching that narrative play out, another story was unfolding quietly on our own doorstep.
Namibia imports roughly 70 percent of its grain.
The cereal import bill in 2025 was approximately N$862.9 million. Wheat production dropped 83.7 percent in a single year, from 18,328 tonnes in 2023/24 to 2,984 tonnes in 2024/25. Maize dropped by more than half.
Mahangu, the traditional staple of the northern regions, tells an even starker story. Local production sat at 382 tonnes. Imports stood at 2,245 tonnes.
These are not projections. These are current figures.
The consequences are measurable. Nationally, 1,101 malnutrition deaths have been recorded. Twenty-four percent of children under five are stunted. Six percent are wasting. Thirteen percent are underweight. At the peak of the lean season, 1.15 million Namibians, nearly 40 percent of the population, faced severe food insecurity.
The children are dying in a country with mines, oceans, and farms.
The Farms That Stopped Feeding Us
Namibia has 11 Green Scheme irrigation projects. Only three are operational.
The Kalimbeza rice project produced a rice crop in 2024. That crop sat unprocessed for ten months because the processing machine was broken. Of the N$18 million allocated to Kalimbeza that year, N$8 million was spent on a consultant.
The parliamentary committee that investigated the schemes did not mince words: “Overall, the equipment is very old and outdated and does not work properly.”
Dr Tobie Aupindi, Chairperson of the Parliamentary Standing Committee on Natural Resources, described the Hardap Green Scheme as “a disaster.” His words: “There are no renovations, no equipment, no proper operational framework and no governance.”
The committee’s report found that “excessive centralised procurement is suffocating productivity, cash flow and sustainability at green schemes.” And it warned: “Persistent challenges, if left unaddressed, may kill the Green Scheme entirely.”
Agribusdev, the parastatal established in 2011 to manage the schemes, was dismantled in 2021 due to poor management. The report notes that “some four years later, no full implementation has taken place.”
And while the farms collapse, the support that would keep them standing is being withdrawn.
The 2026/27 budget cut the Ministry of Agriculture by 26 percent, from N$2.52 billion to N$1.83 billion.
The steepest cut falls on Agriculture Production and Extension Services, which is set to shrink by 66 percent, from N$535 million to N$183 million.
The ratio of extension officers to farmers in Namibia stands at 1:1,000. The FAO recommends 1:500. Over half of farmers had no contact with an extension provider for more than a year.
One peer-reviewed study described agricultural extension services in Namibia as “doing nothing, being incompetent and rarely visiting farmers.”
Minister Inge Zaamwani has warned that the cuts “would significantly affect the Ministry’s ability to deliver on its priority areas of food security.”
Extension services cut 66 percent. Extension ratio at 1:1,000. Resettlement farms lying idle across the country. Agriculture budget cut 26 percent. Food self-sufficiency collapsing.
The NDP6 strategy, the country’s own roadmap, targets 60 percent local food production by 2031. It calls for strengthened extension services, climate-smart agriculture, and expanded irrigation. The budget cuts the very services that make those targets possible.
The question is not why the rain didn’t come. The question is what happened to the farms that were supposed to feed us.
Who Is Responsible?
There is a temptation, when reading both stories, to look for someone to blame. But the question is not just who sold the narrative. The question is why we bought it.
Namibia had its own disinformation crisis during the 2024 elections. The Institute for Public Policy Research (IPPR) documented widespread digital disinformation, AI-generated “cheap fakes,” and coordinated campaigns targeting voters, political parties, and institutions.
WhatsApp emerged as the dominant vector for false content because of its encrypted, closed-network nature. TikTok played a significant role for the first time.
Federico Links, IPPR’s project coordinator, put it plainly: “Topics like race, immigration and gender are being used to push a narrative, and we see societies including Namibia becoming even more polarised.”
The IPPR recommended that the government “prioritise digital information literacy and educate the public on how to identify false content.”
The government has not acted on that recommendation.
But the government cannot do everything. The listener has a responsibility too.
Are you educating yourself well enough to cope in the age of information? When you receive a WhatsApp forward, do you verify it before you share it? When you see a headline that confirms what you already believe, do you check it, or do you just pass it on?
The “white genocide” narrative was sold to 13,000 people who acted on it. And the “food security nation” narrative is being sold to 3 million Namibians who are living its failure.
Both narratives serve someone. Neither serves us.
The Question
13,000 people applied. Hundreds were denied. 1,000 reclaimed their citizenship. 12,000 more are checking whether they can go back.
Meanwhile, 1,101 people, most of them children, died of malnutrition in a country that imports 70 percent of its grain.
Two stories. One question: are we checking before we share, and before we starve?
A luta continua.
Editor’s Note: This article draws on reporting from Pew Research, the Centre for Victims of Torture, the Institute for Public Policy Research, the Food and Agriculture Organization, and the World Food Programme. The Namibian government’s own NDP6 strategy document and the 2026/27 national budget were also consulted.
