Friday, President Trump ordered that any foreign help in South Africa be interrupted and said that his administration would prioritize the resettlement of “Afrikaner refugees” in the United States because of what he called actions by the government of the country which “racily disadvantaged”.
In order, Trump said that “the United States will not provide help or assistance to South Africa” and that US officials should do everything possible to help “Afrikaners in South Africa which are victims of unfair racial discrimination ”.
On Sunday, he followed the accusation of Mr. Trump on his social media site that the South African government was engaged in a “massive human rights violation, at least”. He swore a complete investigation and promised to cut the help.
“South Africa confiscated from land and very badly treats certain classes of people,” wrote the president in the post. “This is a bad situation that the radical left media do not mean as much as the mention.”
The order was surprising by providing official American support to longtime conspiracy theories on the ill-treatment of white South Africans in the post-Apartheid era.
Trump made repeated complaints without evidence that echoes these conspiracy theories. In 2018, he ordered his Secretary of State To examine “the large -scale murder of farmers” – a complaint disputed by official personalities and the largest group of farmers in the country.
Trump’s recent comments have referred to a policy that President Cyril Ramaphosa in South Africa signed last month.
The law, known as the law on expropriation, repeals a law of the apartheid era and allows the government in certain cases to acquire private land in public interests without paying compensation – something that can only be done after a justification process subject to a judicial examination.
Mr. Trump’s order one day came after Mr. Ramaphosa delivered his speech on the state of the nation with a challenge that seemed to be a reference to the accusations of the American president.
“We will not be intimidated,” he said. The South African leader has promised to stand united in the face of what he called “the rise of nationalism and protectionism”.
“We will speak with one voice to defend our national interest, our sovereignty and our constitutional democracy,” he said.
In addition to stopping foreign aid, Trump ordered managers to provide “humanitarian” assistance to Afrikaners and allow members of the South African White Minority to take refuge in the United States through of the American refugee program.
Since the transition to democracy in 1994, the South African government has adopted a voluntary approach to try to transfer property from more land to the country’s black majority. The new law, with exceptions limited to this approach, came many black South Africans argued that Nelson Mandela and other leaders had not done enough to force the white minority to abandon the wealth that had been accumulated During apartheid.
The colonial regimes of South Africa were particularly brutal in the black dispossessed of their land and forced them by force. Despite the efforts of postcolonial governments, the result remains clear to date: white South Africans, who represent 7% of the population, own agricultural land which cover the majority of the country.
In a previous decree, Trump had asked for a three-month break in the United States refugee program, blocking the admission of desperate people fleeing war, economic conflicts, natural disasters or political persecution. The order of Friday seemed to make white South Africans an exception to the wider stop.
Although it is not clear if he had an influence on the order of the president, Elon Musk, the billionaire who has become an adviser close to the president, is from South Africa. In 2023, Mr. Musk published similar conspiracy assertions on South Africa on X, the social media platform he owns.
“They openly make the genocide of whites in South Africa”, ” Mr. Musk wrote.
Ramaphosa and Mr. Musk spoke by telephone after this publication on social networks, the South African president trying to clarify what his administration called the “disinformation” worked by Mr. Trump.
In a large part of South Africa, Mr. Trump’s attacks in recent days have inspired a rare political unity, with the left, a centrist and even far -right activists saying that the characterization of the American president of The land transfer law was wrong.
His comments have amplified a long-standing grievance among some white South Africans who claim to have been victims of discrimination by the government led by blacks after apartheid. But Mr. Trump’s comments also angry many South Africans, who considered the law as a necessary means to repair historical injustice.
Since 1994, when South Africa has become a democracy, the country has had a close relationship with the United States. Barack Obama went there several times during his presidency, especially when he attended the commemorative service of Mr. Mandela, who had been imprisoned for 27 years before becoming president of the country.
But the actions of Mr. Trump on Friday clearly indicated that he does not consider the relationship in the same way.
South Africa received more than $ 400 million in help from the United States in 2023, which took place in funding efforts to combat HIV and AIDS. The government has said that US funding represents around 17% of its budget to fight HIV
The extreme right white Afrikaners have applauded Mr. Trump’s attacks on the government of South Africa in recent days.
Ernst Roets, Executive Director of the Afrikaner Foundation, who put pressure on the international support of Afrikaners’s interests, said that while the government did not grasp land, he tried to create a legal and political framework to be able to do so.
The Expropriation Act opens the door to abuse, said Mr. Roets, because the government “can justify many things under the banner of the public interest”. But even Mr. Roets and his group had not called upon Trump to largely reduce aid in South Africa, in place of targeted actions against government leaders.
After Mr. Trump first commented on the confiscation of land, the South African government tried to negotiate a conversation between his Minister of Foreign Affairs and Marco Rubio, the Secretary of State, according to Ebrahim Rasool, African Ambassador from southern to the United States. But the Trump administration did not respond, he said.
