Another front of diplomatic tension has been created by moves and decisions of the US administration of President Donald Trump, this time with South Africa, with a presidential order signed yesterday by the US president to freeze all US aid to Pretoria culminating in an escalation in relations between the two countries that had been building in recent days.
Yesterday, Friday, Trump announced that the US would no longer provide aid to South Africa, citing a law that provides for land expropriations, which he claims discriminates against white farmers. The controversial law “allows the South African government to proceed with the seizure of agricultural properties of the Afrikaner ethnic minority without compensation,” Trump lamented in a presidential executive order suspending the provision of aid, referring to the white minority. At the same time, he cited South Africa’s appeal to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) against Israel for genocide in December 2023.
The order provides for the freezing of all US funding “as long as the South African government continues its unjust and immoral actions.”
Reacting to the presidential decree, Pretoria today denounced a “campaign of disinformation and propaganda.”
The South African Ministry of Foreign Affairs in a statement expressed “deep concern” about the basis of the claim made in the decree, which “lacks accuracy and fails to acknowledge South Africa’s deep and painful history of colonialism and apartheid.”
“We are concerned about what appears to be a campaign of disinformation and propaganda aimed at distorting our great nation,” the South African Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement today. “It is disappointing that such narratives appear to be embraced by decision-makers in the United States of America.”
Trump’s order yesterday came as a culmination of an escalation in Washington-Pretoria relations that began early last week, with Trump accusing South Africa of land seizures after his counterpart Cyril Ramaphosa pushed through a land expropriation law. The latter reacted strongly, refuting the accusations, saying that his country “will not be intimidated.”
The verbal attacks of South African-born Elon Musk – the world’s richest person and a senior official in Donald Trump’s administration – who accused the South African government of promoting “openly racist land ownership laws” further exacerbated the climate, with US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announcing on Wednesday that he would not travel to South Africa to take part in a G20 summit.
The South African presidency, in statements last week, has repeatedly denied any intention of “land seizures.”
This diplomatic tension portends turmoil for the US’s largest trading partner in Africa, many experts say, as Washington has provided about $440 billion in aid to South Africa in 2023, according to US government figures.
In the presidential decree, Trump promises to provide assistance and to welcome people who, according to him, are suffering “unfair discrimination because of their race”.
Today, State Department spokeswoman Tammy Bruce reiterated that the US is ready to welcome “persecuted white farmers and other innocent victims who are targeted solely because of their race”.
Pretoria described in its statement today as particularly “ironic” that the US decree provides for “the granting of refugee status” in the US to “a group of South Africans who remain one of the most economically privileged” while at the same time “vulnerable people from other parts of the world are being deported from the US and denied asylum despite the real difficulties they face.”
The small organisation Afriforum, which aims to “protect and promote the identity of the Afrikaner”, expressed its “great satisfaction with the recognition by Trump and the US of the injustice to which the Afrikaner are subjected”. However, the organisation stresses that the position of white South Africans is in their own country and echoes in the US.
The land issue divides South Africa. Most of the land is owned by the white minority, a legacy of the apartheid era’s land expropriation policy.
South Africa’s president pushed through a law in late January that allows the government, under certain conditions and for reasons of public interest, to decide on expropriations without any compensation. Pretoria argues that the law does not allow authorities to proceed with land expropriations arbitrarily and that they should first try to reach an agreement with the landowner in question.
