The father of tech billionaire Elon Musk is working on a project to provide refugee status in Russia for South African farmers, he told AFP on Tuesday, in a project similar to one by the US government.

The initiative would resettle 50 families from the white Afrikaans minority, descendants of the first Dutch settlers, according to a Russian official.

The same group of South Africans has been offered refugee status by the government of US President Donald Trump, which claims that they face persecution since the end of apartheid. Pretoria denies these allegations.

Nearly 5,000 white Afrikaners have entered the United States as refugees since Trump took office in January 2025 and all but halted refugee programmes for every other group.

Errol Musk's links to Russia

The US programme has heavily been faulted by the South African government which denies any discrimination.

Contacted by AFP by telephone on Tuesday, Errol Musk told AFP from Moscow: "It's about providing refugee status to South African farmers."

Musk, who regularly visits Russia and attended an April 12 Orthodox Easter mass in Moscow in the presence of President Vladimir Putin, did not give details of the project.

In an interview with Russian media Gubernia 33, he justified the project by claiming white Afrikaner farmers were being discriminated upon, allegations strongly rejected by South Africa.

Emigration to Russia

Washington made similar claims in its justification for encouraging Afrikaners to resettle in the United States.

The governor of the Vladimir region which borders the Moscow region, Aleksandr Avdeyev, said last week that he had discussed the project with Musk.

"We discussed the development of agriculture and the prospects for settling 50 Dutch-origin families from South Africa," he said on Telegram.

While Afrikaners have been emigrating to Russia since at least 2018, according to reports, Musk's involvement appears to be new information.

Fallout with Elon Musk

Billionaire Elon Musk, who left South Africa in his late teens, recently echoed Trump's claim of white discrimination.

Elon Musk was peddling "lies and disinformation", President Cyril Ramaphosa's spokesperson responded on X.

Musk had attempted to introduce Starlink internet service in South Africa, but the government rejected its licence application, citing qualification failure.

South African laws designed to rebalance apartheid-era discrimination require large companies to be at least 30% owned by people from previously disadvantaged communities.