United States President Donald Trump fulfilled his promise to punish South Africa and on Friday signed an executive order suspending all aid to the country for what he said were human rights violations against the minority white population.
Trump claims that the recently passed land expropriation law in South Africa is "grossly" discriminatory against whites, "Afrikaners", descendants of the Dutch and other European colonizers, and that the South African government is allowing oppression of them.
He also accused South Africa of supporting “bad actors” in the world – the Palestinian group Hamas, Russia and Iran.
Land distribution in South Africa has been a complicated and highly emotional issue with racial connotations for more than 30 years, since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994.
The issue has been in the spotlight worldwide since Trump and his South African-born adviser, Elon Musk, criticized the South African government's policies as anti-white, making false claims.
The new Expropriation Act gives the South African government the ability to expropriate private land, but only if it is in the public interest and under certain conditions. Trump mentioned this last week when he first announced his intention to stop funding to South Africa.
He said the South African government is doing "terrible things" and claims that land has been confiscated from "certain classes" which is not true, and even groups in South Africa challenging the law say that no land has been confiscated. The South African government says private property rights are protected and that Trump's description of the law contains misinformation and "distortions".
However, the law has raised concerns in South Africa, particularly among groups representing parts of the white minority, who say it will target them and their country even though race is not mentioned in the law.
The law, linked to the legacy of the racist system of apartheid and colonialism before that, is part of decades of efforts by South Africa to try to right historical wrongs.
Under apartheid, blacks were stripped of their land and forced to live in areas designated for non-whites. Whites now make up about seven percent of South Africa's 62 million people, but own about 70 percent of private farmland, and the government says the inequality needs to be addressed.
The “Afrikaners” are a group of white South Africans who are descended mainly from Dutch settlers who arrived 370 years ago. They speak “Afrikaans,” one of South Africa’s 11 official languages, and make up many of South Africa’s rural farming communities.
"Afrikaners" were the core of the apartheid regime, and tensions between some "Afrikaner" groups and black political parties persisted after the abolition of apartheid, although South Africa has largely succeeded in reconciling many racial groups and most "Afrikaners" consider themselves part of the new South Africa.
Trump's executive order, which his administration says addresses serious human rights abuses in South Africa, alleging that the South African government has allowed violent attacks on "Afrikaner" farmers and their families. Trump said the US would establish a plan to resettle white South African farmers and their families as refugees.
Billionaire and Trump ally Elon Musk was born and raised in South Africa, but left after high school in the late 1980s, when South Africa was still under apartheid.
He has criticized his homeland’s leadership for years, accusing it of anti-white policies and ignoring or even encouraging “genocide” – the killings of some white farmers. Those killings are at the heart of claims by conservative commentators – and now amplified by Trump and Musk – that South Africa is allowing attacks on white farmers to drive them out.
The South African government has condemned the killings, saying they are part of an unusually high rate of violent crime. Experts say there is no evidence of genocide and that the killings make up a very small percentage of all killings. For example, a group that tracks farm attacks says 2023 farmers or their families were killed in 49, out of more than 27.000 murders in the country that year.
Musk this week accused South Africa of having "racist property laws," which is believed to be related to his failure to obtain a license in the country for his Starlink satellite internet service.
Trump's order halts hundreds of millions of dollars the United States gives South Africa annually, much of it to help its HIV/AIDS response. The United States gave South Africa about $440 million last year and funds 17 percent of South Africa's HIV program through the President's Emergency Plan for AIDS Relief.
Parts of that funding were already at risk from Trump's freeze on global aid, but now all of it will be halted, dealing a major blow to South Africa's health sector. South Africa has about eight million people living with HIV, 5,5 million of whom are receiving antiretroviral drugs, and US funding is vital to supporting the world's largest HIV/AIDS program.
The executive order also alleges that South Africa has taken an anti-American stance – even “led the attack” – on many issues, accusing it of supporting Hamas, Russia and Iran and of being too close to China’s ruling Communist Party.
South Africa has long been a supporter of the Palestinians and a critic of Israel, and maintains close ties with Russia for its help in the fight against apartheid. Trump's order appears to require a significant shift in South Africa's foreign policy to allow aid to resume.
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