Pretoria, South Africa - The white Afrikaners who have accepted resettlement in the US did not face "any form of persecution" in South Africa, the foreign ministry said on Monday.

It came hours after a first group of 49 white South Africans flew out of Johannesburg following Donald Trump's offer to grant refugee status to white Afrikaners.

Mainly descendants of Dutch settlers, Trump has claimed white Afrikaners face "racial discrimination" in South Africa, heightening tensions between the two countries.

"They can't provide any proof of any persecution because there is not any form of persecution to white South Africans or to Afrikaners South Africans," Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola told reporters.

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Their claims that white farmers are targeted for murder – despite official data that most victims of killings are young Black men in urban areas – have morphed into a myth of a "white genocide," also repeated by Trump.

The US president, whose tycoon ally Elon Musk was born in South Africa, said in February he would prioritize access to a refugee program "for Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination," even as he halted refugee arrivals to the US immediately after taking office.

"We are glad that a number of organizations, even from the Afrikaner structures, have denounced this so-called persecution," Lamola said.

The 49 left Johannesburg's main airport on a chartered flight on Sunday and are due to land in the US on Monday.

White South Africans, who make up 7.3% of the population, generally enjoy a higher standard of living than the Black majority of the country – an ongoing legacy of colonialism.

Mainly Afrikaner-led governments imposed the race-based apartheid system that denied the Black majority political and economic rights until it was voted out in 1994.