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”.
Land ownership has long been a contentious issue in South Africa with most farmland still owned by white people, 30 years after the end of the racist system of apartheid.
There have been continuous calls for the government to address land reform and deal with the past injustices of racial segregation.
“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,” Ramaphosa responded in a statement on X on Monday morning.
Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa and is now a Trump adviser has also joined in the debate.
“Why do you have openly racist ownership laws?” Elon Musk said to Ramaphosa in a post on X.
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 International Relations Minister Ronald Lamola said in a response on X that he hoped Trump’s advisers would use “this investigative period to deepen their understanding of South Africa’s policies as a constitutional democracy”.
“Such insights will ensure a respectful and informed approach to our democratic commitments,” he added.
The South African president said the government had not confiscated any land.
In his response, the South African president said that the new law was not a “confiscation instrument, but a constitutionally mandated legal process that ensures public access to land in an equitable and just manner as guided by the constitution”.
He said there was no other funding that is received by South Africa from the US except for the US health initiative Pepfar, which he said represented “17% 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.
The South African government says that the new law does not allow arbitrary seizures of land as it must first attempt to reach an agreement with the owner.
The president’s spokesperson, Vincent Magwenya, last month said the state “may not expropriate property arbitrarily or for a purpose other than… in the public interest”.
It says that the current system of “willing seller, willing buyer” has allowed white farmers to delay the process of land reform.
However, some critics have expressed fears that the law may have disastrous consequences like in Zimbabwe, where land seizures wrecked the economy and scared away investors.
In 2018, Trump had, during his first term as president, asked the-then US Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to study South Africa’s “farm seizures and expropriations and the large-scale killing of farmers”.
At that time, South Africa then accused Trump of seeking to sow division with a spokesperson saying he was “misinformed”.
Source: BBC
