- President Donald Trump said he will cut U.S. aid to South Africa. Although the country receives little in U.S. aid, Trump said a law allowing the government to buy and take over unused land represented anti-white racism.
- South Africa’s government said the law is similar to eminent domain in the U.S. and applies regardless of the landowner’s race.
- Over the past three decades, South Africa has been working to address inequality caused by apartheid, which required discrimination against Black South Africans.
President Donald Trump said Sunday, Feb. 2, that he plans to cut off all U.S. aid to South Africa. The president is accusing the country of confiscating land and “treating certain classes of people very badly.”
South Africa’s president said the country receives very little aid from the U.S. government. The president says the only significant program is meant to combat HIV and AIDS. However, South Africa relies on the U.S. as a trade partner, something Trump’s move would not directly affect.
South Africa is a little more than 30 years removed from its first democratic presidential election. Nelson Mandela became the country’s first Black president in 1994.
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The country previously limited voting to its white minority. It was part of a policy known as apartheid –– a set of strict segregation laws that paralleled Jim Crow laws in the American South.
But unlike the U.S., South Africa’s apartheid laws applied nationwide and, instead of targeting minority groups, blocked the majority-Black population from exercising its rights, keeping the small white population in charge.
In the aftermath of apartheid, the South African government has worked to even the distribution of land ownership. Despite its progress toward making land ownership more representative, white South Africans own roughly half of the country’s land while making up only 7% of the population.
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a law allowing the government to take over land regardless of the owner’s race. This law only allows if it is not being used and would be in the public interest to acquire it.
The new law has not led to any land takeovers yet. However, most of the land the government has acquired since the end of apartheid has been the result of government purchases from willing white sellers.
South Africa’s foreign minister echoed Ramaphosa’s statement that the law is not a land grab but more closely parallels eminent domain laws in the U.S.
President Trump spoke out against South Africa during his first term. He exaggerated the effects of the land deals and said the government regularly seized land from white South Africans. He also pointed to incidents in which white farmers were killed as evidence of discrimination.
While white farmers in South Africa have been murdered, the country’s local media have concluded the claims Trump echoed were false.
Instead, they note, the killings are part of the country’s difficulty in controlling crime. Official government data shows there are 70 homicides per day and that most victims are Black.
But there’s also one major tie to South Africa in Trump’s second administration. Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and leader of Trump’s Department of Government Efficiency organization, was born and raised in South Africa.
Like Trump, Musk echoed claims South African media have concluded are false. Musk has used the killings of white farmers as evidence of a genocide against white people in South Africa.
On Monday, Feb. 3, Musk quote-tweeted a post on X by Ramaphosa and asked, “Why do you have openly racist ownership laws?”
Musk lived in the country during apartheid, which lasted from 1948 to 1994. He left in 1989, when he was 17 years old, near the end of the apartheid era. In a 2017 Musk biography, author Ashlee Vance said Musk left to avoid mandatory military service under the apartheid regime.
