US President Donald Trump has said he will cut all future funding to South Africa over allegations that it was confiscating land and “treating certain classes of people very badly”, reports BBC News.
Last month, it said, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law a Bill that allows land seizures without compensation in certain circumstances.
Land ownership has long been a contentious issue in South Africa with most private farmland owned by white people, 30 years after the end of the racist system of apartheid, added the BBC report.
There have been continuous calls for the Government to address land reform and deal with the past injustices of racial segregation.
Ramaphosa response
South Africa’s President responded to Trump with a post on X: “South Africa is a constitutional democracy that is deeply rooted in the rule of law, justice and equality. The South African Government has not confiscated any land.” He added that the only funding South Africa received from the US was through the health initiative Pepfar, which represented “17 per cent of South Africa’s HIV/Aids programme”.
The US allocated about $440m (£358m) in assistance to South Africa in 2023, according to US Government data, said the BBC report further. Elon Musk, who was born and grew up in South Africa and is now a Trump adviser, has also joined in the debate, saying the new law discriminated against the white people. “Why do you have openly racist ownership laws?” Musk said to Ramaphosa in a post on X.
Cyril Ramaphosa, President of South Africa
‘Some terrible things’
On Sunday, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social: “I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed!” He later said, in a briefing with journalists, that South Africa’s “leadership is doing some terrible things, horrible things”.
“So that’s under investigation right now. We’ll make a determination, and until such time as we find out what South Africa is doing – they’re taking away land and confiscating land, and actually they’re doing things that are perhaps far worse than that.”
South Africa’s new law allows for expropriation without compensation only in circumstances where it is “just and equitable and in the public interest” to do so. This includes if the property is not being used and there is no intention to either develop or make money from it, or when it poses a risk to people.
