The United States will immediately start offering a rapid pathway to citizenship for South African farmers, President Trump said in a social media post on Friday, falsely claiming that South Africa’s government was confiscating their land “and MUCH WORSE THAN THAT.”
The post largely echoed what Mr. Trump has previously said about South Africa, including in an executive order last month in which he suspended all American aid to the country and offered refugee status to Afrikaners, a white ethnic minority.
In January, President Cyril Ramaphosa of South Africa signed into law a measure that would allow the government to take land in the public interest without providing compensation; shortly after, Mr. Trump began criticizing the South African government. Elon Musk, who is from South Africa, has backed the president’s statements with his own social media posts that accuse the country’s government of having openly racist laws.
“A bad place to be right now,” Mr. Trump wrote of South Africa on Friday.
His post comes as the South African government is preparing a trade deal to offer to Mr. Trump, hoping that it will settle tensions, stave off further punitive action and convince him to keep a close relationship with South Africa. Mr. Ramaphosa had previously said that Mr. Trump was spreading misinformation and that he was looking forward to meeting with the U.S. president to clear the air.
“We are not going to partake in counterproductive megaphone diplomacy,” Vincent Magwenya, a spokesman for Mr. Ramaphosa, said in response to Friday’s post. “We remain committed to building a mutually beneficial bilateral trade, political and diplomatic relationship with the United States. Obviously, it must be a relationship that is based on mutual respect and respect for our independence and sovereignty.”
Mr. Trump’s post on Friday departed from his executive order in one crucial way. The order specifically offered refuge to Afrikaners, the descendants of European colonizers who led the apartheid regime. But his post said that farmers could flee to the United States. While most of the major commercial farmers in South Africa are white, most farmers overall are Black, and many of them produce food to feed themselves and their families.
It is unclear whether Mr. Trump will extend refugee status and rapid citizenship to Black farmers. Since returning to office in January, Mr. Trump has made it a priority to crack down on the influx of refugees into the United States.
Some conservative Afrikaners have tried to capitalize on Mr. Trump’s support. A delegation of them met with White House officials in Washington last week, asking for U.S. funding to help build their own communities. They also asked for the United States to put pressure on the South African government to repeal laws meant to address the inequalities created under apartheid that they believe discriminate against white people.
Many Afrikaner activists have said that they would rather live in an improved South Africa than flee to the United States.
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