US President Donald Trump. (File photo by Seth Wenig-Pool/Getty Images)
A so-called fact sheet setting out US President Donald Trump’s reasons for freezing all aid to South Africa, repeats the claim that the country champions terrorism abroad and foments race-based violence at home.
“While championing terrorism and autocratic regimes abroad, South Africa has committed similar human rights violations at home,” the document, published on the White House website last Friday, asserts.
“The government of South Africa blatantly discriminates against ethnic minority descendants of settler groups.”
It is dated 7 February, the same day that Trump signed a presidential decree suspending donor funding of millions of dollars a year to South Africa, but was disseminated by the US embassy on Monday.
Diplomats in Pretoria had no hand in the document, but were instructed to issue it.
The missive seeks to cast Trump’s decree as a confirmation of his commitment to human rights, at a time when United Nations officials and legal scholars have said his plan for the forcible removal of all Palestinians from Gaza would amount to ethnic cleansing.
“A commitment to human rights is central to President Trump’s America First agenda,” the White House said.
It claimed that the Expropriation Act “enables the government of South Africa to seize ethnic minority descendants of settler groups’ agricultural property without compensation”.
The law is not part of South Africa’s land reform regime. Instead it is designed to enable the state to acquire a specific property from a private owner to fulfil a public function, such as build a school. The scope of the Act is limited by the fact that it empowers only the department of public works to expropriate property in this context.
The domestic dispute regarding the Act, which President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law last month, revolves largely around the provision for expropriation with nil compensation.
Chapter 12 allows for this where an owner has abandoned the land or does not intend to develop the land or use it otherwise to generate an income “but to benefit from appreciation of its market value”.
It further allows expropriation without compensation where the land belongs to an organ of state that it is not using it to fulfill its core functions or likely to do so in the future, or where the market value of land is less than or equal to what the state would spend on its purchase and beneficial capital improvement.
Race is not one of the rationale for zero compensation. Nonetheless, Trump’s office located it in a policy scheme allegedly designed to prevent racial equality in post-apartheid South Africa.
“The Expropriation Act follows countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners,” the communique claimed.
“Years ago, the South African government disbanded volunteer forces defending rural farmers, turning a blind eye to the ensuing farm attacks.”
This seems to be a reference to the disbandment, starting in 2003, of the rural safety commando units of the South African National Defence Force. It was one of the chief complaints AfriForum took to US lawmakers and right-wing American media in a years-long lobbying campaign designed to find support for Afrikaners who consider themselves marginalised and victimised since the end of apartheid.
In his decree, Trump offered Afrikaners refuge in the US.
The White House communique added: “The United States will establish a plan to resettle disfavoured minorities in South Africa discriminated against because of their race as refugees.”
Ramaphosa’s office has repeatedly said Trump’s decision was based on misinformation.
In the debate on Tuesday on Ramaphosa’s State of the Nation address last Thursday, MPs focused strongly on the crisis with the US.
Democratic Alliance leader and Agriculture Minister John Steenhuisen called the decision to scrap the rural units a disaster, but said it left farmers of all races vulnerable to violent crime.
“It was a catastrophic mistake that opened the door to a collapse of rural policing and the targeting of our farmers, and farmworkers, regardless of race by violent criminals and syndicates.”
Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Groenewald, who is the minister of correctional services in the governing coalition, reiterated his party’s concerns about land reform and illegal land occupation and said he needed to thank Trump for taking notice of Afrikaners, but added that he had no wish to decamp to the US.
“Let us be honest, President Trump has shone the spotlight on the Afrikaner in South Africa,” Groenewald said in Afrikaans.
“I thank him because we are part of South Africa. And if there are people who want to leave the country, then that is their free choice. The Freedom Front Plus will not be prescriptive, but honourable president, I am here to stay.
“We believe South Africa belongs to all who live in it, united in our diversity … The Afrikaner is part of that diversity, and we want to build South Africa.”
Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema, whom Elon Musk has called a “genocidal lunatic”, told the National Assembly Trump was using the Expropriation Act and alleged Afrikaner victimhood as a pretext to penalise South Africa for what really provoked his ire — accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.
“Mr President, we are not being attacked by the Trump administration because you did anything wrong. They are attacking us because of our stance on Israel. They are attacking us because of the action the government has taken to the ICJ,” Malema said, referring to the International Court of Justice (ICJ).
“Do not be misled by people who are saying you are under siege because of expropriation, which is a meaningless Act. This Act does not say anything, and they all understand that language. They are using it to fight our case against Israel.”
The White House communique expressly linked the presidential decree to South Africa’s stance on the conflict in the Gaza and its approach to the tribunal in The Hague.
“South Africa has taken positions against the United States and its allies,” it said.
“Merely two months after the October 7th terrorist attacks on Israel, South Africa accused Israel, not Hamas, of genocide in the International Court of Justice.”
It added that “South Africa also strengthened ties with Iran, which supports terrorism globally”.
In his decree, Trump had accused Pretoria of “reinvigorating relations with Iran to develop military, and nuclear arrangements”.
International relations spokesperson Chrispin Phiri said this was plainly unfounded.
“It’s preposterous. We do not believe that nuclear weapons have a place in our world,” Phiri said.
“South Africa values its cooperation with the international community to prevent the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and their means of delivery, including in response to information regarding potential proliferation activities, transgressions of UN Security Council sanctions.”
In the National Assembly, Rise Mzansi leader Songezo Zibi said the communique was clearly based on falsehoods but the Trump administration’s actions were of deadly import, and not for South Africa alone.
“This is obviously based on a lie — as are many statements the second Trump administration makes about other countries, and the agencies of the US government itself, such as the USAid,” Zibi said.
“This is an administration that engages in acts of bullying such as the use of tariffs and other punishments our international partners like Canada, Mexico and China have had to endure, just in the last few weeks. We are not exempt from this new, dystopian world.