President Trump signed an executive order Friday formally stopping any aid to South Africa and asked his Cabinet to form a program to help resettle anyone from the country who are “victims of unjust racial discrimination.”
Trump criticized South Africa for its seizing of “ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation,” as well as its taking of “aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide in the International Court of Justice, and reinvigorating its relations with Iran to develop commercial, military, and nuclear arrangements.”
As long as South Africa continues its “unjust and immoral practices,” the U.S. “shall not provide aid or assistance to South Africa and the United States shall promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.”
The Expropriation Act, which was signed into law by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa last month, is a “massive Human Rights VIOLATION, at a minimum, is happening for all to see,” Trump said last week, adding that the South African government is confiscating “land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY.” Trump added in the same Truth Social post that he “will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed!”
The law, signed in January, allows the South African government to seize land without compensation where it is “just and equitable and in the public interest.”
In addition, Secretary of State Marco Rubio said Thursday that he would not go to the G20 summit in Johannesburg later this month, stating that “South Africa is doing very bad things. Expropriating private property. Using G20 to promote ‘solidarity, equality, & sustainability.’ In other words: DEI and climate change.”