Trump declared he would cut aid to South Africa over “rights violations”, relating to new laws giving the South African Government the power to expropriate land
Afrikaans farmers picket in support of an executive order by US President Donald Trumpopen image in gallery
Afrikaans farmers picket in support of an executive order by US President Donald Trump (EPA)
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Donald Trump has offered a fast path to citizenship for South African farmers, after cutting aid to the country over “unjust racial discrimination” of Afrikaners.
The US President railed on his Truth Social platform over South Africa’s new laws that give the government the power to take land from people without compensation in some cases.
“South Africa is being terrible, plus, to long time Farmers in the country. They are confiscating their LAND and FARMS, and MUCH WORSE THAN THAT. A bad place to be right now, and we are stopping all Federal Funding,” he said.
“To go a step further, any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship. This process will begin immediately!”
Elon Musk has repeatedly condemned the South African governmentopen image in gallery
Elon Musk has repeatedly condemned the South African government (Copyright 2025 The Associated Press. All rights reserved)
His comments came after a US directive that “all bureaus, offices and missions shall pause all obligations and/or dispersion of aid or assistance to South Africa”.
It followed Trump’s executive order to cut aid to South Africa over “rights violations” and for accusing Israel of genocide in the International Court of Justice, for its treatment of the Palestinian people.
The 7 February order stated: “In shocking disregard of its citizens’ rights, South Africa recently enacted Expropriation Act 13 of 2024 to enable the government... to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation.
“This Act follows countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.”
Trump’s ongoing condemnation of South Africa’s policies tracks closely with that of his close supporter, South African-born billionaire Elon Musk, who has long criticized his homeland for “openly racist policies” and the “genocide of white people”.
President Trump has railed against the South African governmentopen image in gallery
President Trump has railed against the South African government (AFP via Getty Images)
Musk’s grandfather Joshua Norman Haldeman was infamously an avowed racist, anti-semite and apartheid supporter, moving his family from Canada to South Africa in the 1950s over his interest in the racist policy. As he told a Nazi-alligned newspaper in World War II: “It encouraged me to come and settle here”.
In 2023, Musk falsely claimed on X that the government was “openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa”, and retweeted the South African president’s comments about the expropriation act, saying “Why do you have openly racist ownership laws?”
This week he retweeted several people on X who were claiming Musk’s Starlink satellite internet system was not allowed to operate in South Africa “simply because Elon isn’t black”.
A South African Court last month dismissed Trump and Musk’s claims of a white genocide as “not real” and “clearly imagined” following attacks from Musk and Trump.
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa introduced the land seizure law in Januaryopen image in gallery
South African president Cyril Ramaphosa introduced the land seizure law in January (AFP via Getty Images)
Afrikaners are white South Africans descended from Dutch settlers. While they make up just over 7 per cent of the South African population, they dominated the country’s politics until the mid-1994s through the Apartheid system of institutionalized racial segregation which dictated where people could live and work, whom they could marry and how they could mix in public.
In January, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa brought in a controversial law allowing the government to seize land without compensating the prior owners but only if the seizure was in the public interest, replacing a previous Act that compelled the state to compensate owners.
The law is part of an effort to allow Black South Africans to reclaim land that was taken under an apartheid law introduced in 1950 that allowed the government to take land for the use of a single race. Before Trump’s order came into effect, the South African president said he wanted to “do a deal” with Trump to resolve the dispute, and he would wait for the “dust to settle” to travel to the US and repair the relationships.
"We don't want to go and explain ourselves. We want to go and do a meaningful deal with the United States on a whole range of issues," Ramaphosa said at the end of February.
"I'm very positively inclined to promoting a good relationship with President Trump."
South Africa had also been preparing a new trade deal in the hopes of appeasing the US president.