Donald Trump to reduce funding from South Africa on land crisis policy

US President Donald Trump said he would reduce all future funding in South Africa for allegations that land was confiscated and “treat some classes of people very badly”.

Last month, President Cyril Ramaphosa has signed a bill that authorizes seizures without compensation in certain circumstances.

Land ownership has long been a controversial problem in South Africa with most private agricultural land belonging to whites, 30 years after the end of the racist apartheid system.

There have been continuous calls for government to combat agrarian reform and manage past injustices of racial segregation.

“South Africa is a constitutional democracy deeply rooted in the rule of law, justice and equality. The South African government has confiscated any land”, ” Ramaphosa responded in a declaration on X Monday morning.

Elon Musk, who was born and grew up in South Africa and is now a Trump advisor, has also joined the debate.

“Why do you have openly racist property laws?” Mr. Musk said to Ramaphosa in a post on X.

On Sunday, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social: “I will cut all future funding in South Africa until a complete survey on this situation is completed!”

He later declared, in a briefing with journalists, that “the leadership of South Africa has terrible things, horrible things”.

“So, it is under investigation at the moment. We will take a determination, and until we discover what South Africa does – they removed land and confiscated land, and in fact, they make things that may be far worse than that. “

Ramaphosa said that the only financing of South Africa received from the United States was through the Pepfar health initiative, which represented “17% of the HIV / AIDS program in South Africa”.

The United States has allocated around $ 440 million (358 million pounds Sterling) in South Africa in 2023, according to US government data.

The South African president stressed that the government had not confiscated any land.

The new law was not an “instrument of confiscation, but a constitutionally mandated legal process which guarantees public access to the land in a fair and just guided manner,” said Ramaphosa.

The new law authorizes expropriation without compensation only in the circumstances where it is “fair and fair and in the public interest” to do so.

This includes if the property is not used and there is no intention to develop or make money or when it presents a risk for people.

Until now, the land had only allowed the government to buy land from its current owners under the principle of the “voluntary seller, voluntary buyer”, who, according to some, has delayed the process of agrarian reform.

However, some criticisms have expressed their fears that the law may have disastrous consequences like in Zimbabwe, where the earthflows were shipwrecked by the economy and frightened investors.

Trump also struck in South Africa during his first mandate as American president, asking the American secretary of state, Mike Pompeo, to study the “agricultural convropriations of the country and the large -scale murder of farmers”.

At that time, South Africa accused Trump of trying to sow the division, with a spokesperson saying that he was “poorly informed”.