“We won’t be bullied,” South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa emphatically advised his nation’s Parliament on Thursday.
“We’re witnessing the rise of nationalism, protectionism, the pursuit of slender pursuits and the decline of widespread trigger,” Ramaphosa mentioned throughout his State of the Nation address. “However we aren’t daunted to navigate our path by means of this world that consistently adjustments. We won’t be deterred. We’re, as South Africans, a resilient folks.”
Whereas he didn’t point out any bully by title, Ramaphosa’s remarks got here simply days after U.S. President Donald Trump threatened to chop all funding to South Africa, alluding to the long-running false narrative that white South Africans are being mistreated by the nation’s post-apartheid authorities.
Trump and his allies, significantly South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, have ramped up their rhetoric towards South Africa in obvious response to the just lately handed Expropriation Act of 2024, a controversial legislation geared toward fixing the nation’s longstanding land possession inequality downside. The legislation has drawn criticism for supposedly risking and disregarding personal property rights—significantly these of South Africa’s white minority—because it permits land seizures by the state with out compensation.
Trump has equally put “anti-white” insurance policies within the U.S. in his new administration’s crosshairs, cracking down on diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI)-related initiatives throughout the federal authorities and personal sector.
Right here’s what to find out about Trump’s points with South Africa.
What Trump and his allies have mentioned about South Africa
On Feb. 2, Trump announced on his social media web site Reality Social that South Africa has been “confiscating land, and treating sure courses of individuals VERY BADLY.” He then mentioned that he “will probably be chopping off all future funding to South Africa till a full investigation of this example has been accomplished.” He later told reporters that South Africa’s “management is performing some horrible issues, horrible issues.”
It’s not the primary time Trump has made such claims: again in 2018, throughout his first time period, Trump said he’d ordered then-Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to look into land seizures from and killings of white farmers in South Africa.
These feedback echo a longstanding false narrative pushed by right-wing teams in South Africa that white individuals are being dispossessed of their lands and are even victims of genocide.
Musk, who was born in South Africa’s Pretoria, has repeated the parable in a number of posts on X all through the years, together with one in 2023 accusing left-wing South Africans of “brazenly pushing for genocide of white folks” and another the same year saying “They’re really killing white farmers day by day. It’s not only a risk.”
Ramaphosa rejected Trump’s claims, arguing in a put up on X on Feb. 3 that the federal government “has not confiscated any land.” The South African President mentioned the brand new Expropriation Act is “not a confiscation instrument” however a authorized course of that “ensures public entry to land in an equitable and simply method.”
Musk responded on X, asking: “Why do you’ve brazenly racist possession legal guidelines?” The South African authorities then said Ramaphosa spoke with Musk over the cellphone to dispel “misinformation.”
However, Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted on X on Wednesday that he won’t attend the G20 Summit later this 12 months in Johannesburg, claiming that host South Africa is “doing very dangerous issues. Expropriating personal property.” Rubio steered that to go to South Africa could be to “waste taxpayer cash” and “coddle anti-Americanism.”
What’s the Expropriation Act of 2024?
The Expropriation Act of 2024 is South Africa’s newest land reform coverage aimed to resolve possession inequality points created by the pre-1994 apartheid system of white minority rule. Ramaphosa assented to the legislation on Jan. 23 after 5 years of public session and parliamentary debate.
In response to the government, the legislation “outlines how expropriation might be accomplished and on what foundation.” The legislation permits the federal government to soak up land or “for a public objective or within the public curiosity.”
The legislation mandates usually “simply and equitable” compensation, however one clause states that the federal government could not present compensation in sure circumstances, together with when land just isn’t in use and the principle objective is appreciation of market worth, or when the land has been deserted.
Below the law, an expropriating authority—an organ of state or particular person empowered by it or every other laws—ought to have first tried to achieve an settlement with the land proprietor or proper holder to amass the property “on cheap phrases.” Nonetheless, a property can be utilized quickly with out the necessity to attain an settlement if it “is required on an pressing foundation for public objective or within the public curiosity.”
Within the weeks because the laws has taken impact, no land has but been expropriated.
A historical past of land possession inequality in South Africa
Regardless of the official finish of apartheid in 1994, South Africa continues to be reeling from widespread racial inequality in land possession.
A 1913 legislation forcibly eliminated hundreds of Black households from land they owned, limiting African land possession to only 7%, later revised to 13% in 1936. These quotas largely allowed white folks to personal giant swathes of land, whereas forcing the Black majority into crowded townships.
Racially-based land measures had been repealed in 1991, however, according to economists Johann Kirsten and Wandile Sihlobo of Stellenbosch College, white farmers owned some 63% of land: “The brand new [post-apartheid] authorities set a goal of redistributing 30% of this inside 5 years. This goal date has been moved a number of instances and is now 2030,” they wrote in 2022. However progress has been difficult.
In response to a 2017 land audit, white folks, who comprised 8% of the inhabitants, owned about three-quarters of farms and agricultural holdings, whereas Black South Africans solely owned 4%. Advocates for the Expropriation Act say that’s as a result of, till the brand new legislation, the federal government was solely capable of purchase land for redistribution to Black house owners below a “willing-seller, willing-buyer” mannequin, whereas giant quantities of white-owned land remained unutilized.
How has the Expropriation Act of 2024 been obtained in South Africa?
The Expropriation Act of 2024 was handed earlier than South Africa held national elections last year wherein the ruling ANC occasion misplaced its majority for the primary time because it got here into energy post-apartheid. Whereas there’s scant public polling on the problem, the Democratic Alliance, the second-largest occasion in South Africa’s government of national unity (GNU), has opposed the legislation, saying it “wrongly permits nil compensation within the public curiosity throughout the restricted scope of land reform and redress however ignores the general public curiosity in financial progress and jobs.” The Freedom Entrance Plus, a right-wing white occasion additionally a member of the GNU, said it is going to problem the constitutionality of the legislation, because it not solely “poses severe dangers” for South African’s property rights, but additionally sends “a particularly destructive message to the worldwide neighborhood” since “traders won’t simply be persuaded to spend money on a rustic the place their property may very well be expropriated.”
