JOHANNESBURG — Afrikaners who have resettled in the US under a controversial refugee scheme, labeling them "cowards".

The white South Africans arrived in the US on Monday after being granted refugee status by the Trump administration, which says they face racial discrimination at home.

South Africa's government has strongly disputed Washington's claims that Afrikaners are being persecuted.

Ramaphosa said the group of Afrikaners were relocating to the US because they were not in favor of efforts aimed at addressing the country's challenges and apartheid past.

"As South Africans, we are resilient," Ramaphosa said at an agricultural event in the Free State province on Monday.

"We don't run away from our problems. We must stay here and solve our problems. When you run away you are a coward, and that's a real cowardly act."

"I can bet you that they will be back soon because there is no country like South Africa," he added.

The Trump administration has upended US refugee admissions policy, meaning that virtually all people fleeing famine and war no longer have a chance of resettlement there.

Yet it has made an exception for Afrikaners — a white ethnic minority that created and maintained South Africa's brutal apartheid system from the late 1940s until the early 1990s. The move has been widely criticized by rights groups and refugee advocates, who say that the Afrikaners are neither victims of discrimination nor vulnerable.

In response to questions on Monday by reporters about why Afrikaners were being helped over victims of famine and conflict elsewhere in Africa, US President Donald Trump said that the ethnic minority were being killed.

"It's a genocide that’s taking place," Trump said, without providing any evidence. He stressed that he planned to address the issue with South Africa's leadership next week.

Speaking at a business conference in Ivory Coast earlier on Monday, Ramaphosa said he had recently told Trump during a phone call that the US assessment "not true".

"I told him that what you are being told by those people who are opposed to transformation back in South Africa is not true," Ramaphosa said.

The Trump administration has falsely claimed white South Africans are having their land taken away by the government under a new expropriation law that promotes "racially discriminatory property confiscation". No such land has been expropriated. — Euronews