Donald Trump has lengthy been preoccupied with South Africa’s most fraught and emotional home coverage problem: land.
In his first time period the US president directed his then Secretary of State Mike Pompeo — by way of Twitter — to “carefully research the South Africa land and farm seizures” and the supposed “large-scale killing of farmers”.
This week he repeated these pet theories in an Oval Workplace encounter with South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa, who at one level closed his eyes and appeared to will himself to remain calm. Trump’s key declare was that “officers” in South Africa had been saying “kill the white farmer and take their land”.
South Africans know the image on the bottom may be very completely different. The latest land confiscations there came about beneath apartheid, when 87 per cent of South African land was reserved for white individuals, who accounted for beneath a fifth of the inhabitants.
Brutal evictions pressured some 3.5mn Black individuals off their ancestral land, which was incessantly expropriated with out compensation and offered at low costs to white farmers.
By the point the nation grew to become a multiracial democracy in 1994, white farmers nonetheless held about 77mn hectares of the nation’s 122mn hectares of land.
These apartheid-era seizures formed at present’s South Africa.
“These divides very a lot persist,” mentioned Ayesha Omar, lecturer on the College of Witwatersrand. “There was a profound approach through which individuals had been stripped of their land . . . and naturally there was the entire query of dignity.”
Right this moment, white farmers nonetheless personal roughly half of the nation’s land though solely 7 per cent of residents are white. A scarcity of formal entry to land has stopped the Black majority and different traditionally deprived teams from tapping into the enterprise prospects, together with borrowing towards collateral, that such possession brings.
Nelson Mandela’s newly inaugurated authorities in 1994 sought to redress this steadiness. It aimed to redistribute a 3rd of land to traditionally deprived teams, together with Black individuals, by means of a “prepared vendor, prepared purchaser” scheme to buy land at market costs.
The brand new democracy’s structure permitted land expropriation in change for truthful compensation. This has lengthy been an explosive problem, as some politicians argued it must be amended to particularly enable land to be seized, in some circumstances, with out compensation.
“The structure itself centrally addresses the questions round the best way to confront the historic injustices of the previous on the land query,” mentioned Omar.
A legislation handed in January opened up the likelihood for seizures with out compensation, however there has not but been a single such case. The Democratic Alliance, a celebration within the governing coalition, has launched a authorized problem arguing it’s unconstitutional.
Progress in direction of the redistribution purpose has been far slower than the post-apartheid authorities hoped. The state has up to now purchased out some 3.9mn hectares, or 2.5 per cent of the nation’s landmass.
That has been used for varied functions together with farming, forestry, tourism and hospitality, mentioned Mzwanele Nyhontso, minister of land reform and rural improvement.
“The acquisition of land from earlier house owners, specifically white house owners, relies on negotiated agreements,” he added.
Authorities targets for land redistribution have been repeatedly pushed again over 20 years to 2030. The gradual tempo of land reform beneath Ramaphosa’s African Nationwide Congress is certainly one of many causes that South Africa stays among the many world’s most unequal societies. Progress has additionally been hobbled by corruption.
“The South African state doesn’t have the capability to do what it desires to do. It’s clearly a lot greater than a land switch,” mentioned Jonny Steinberg, creator of Winnie & Nelson, a ebook that re-examines the post-apartheid legacy.
Potential new landowners wanted “experience and capital and market help”, he added.
One other drag on the method is the historic transformation by the white minority of the Black majority into an industrial proletariat, severing their hyperlinks with the land.
Alongside along with his views on land, Trump has claimed white farmers face large-scale assaults. However there isn’t a proof that they face extra focused assaults than another group amid South Africa’s excessive charges of violent crime.
Within the first quarter of 2025, there have been six murders on farms, of which one was a white farmer and the remaining Black individuals, based on police figures.
Final 12 months, 26,232 individuals had been murdered in South Africa, a price of 45 per 100,000 towards 5.8 per 100,000 within the US. In that interval, the Transvaal Agricultural Union, a personal agricultural group, mentioned there have been 32 murders on farms, affecting each Black and white individuals.
With reform progressing slowly, populists akin to Julius Malema — the unconventional chief of the Financial Freedom Fighters celebration, who was proven singing the apartheid-era wrestle tune “Kill the Boer” through the Oval Workplace assembly — have seized on rising resentment amongst Black residents.
Corne Mulder, a pacesetter of the Afrikaner curiosity Freedom Entrance Plus, a minority celebration within the governing 10-party coalition, in the meantime blamed Ramaphosa for not addressing variations with Trump behind closed doorways, calling the Oval Workplace assembly “an absolute diplomatic disaster”.
However he claimed Trump had used the “genocide” claims “strategically” to focus on violence towards white farmers.
Trump has repeatedly cited a legislation enacted in January that enables the federal government to expropriate privately held land — the overwhelming majority of which stays white owned — for public use. Specialists have in contrast the laws, handed with out a constitutional change, to a US authorities energy referred to as “eminent area”.
This legislation operates by means of a separate mechanism from the federal government’s broader land reform coverage. Analysts say it’s extra probably for use in circumstances involving, for instance, deserted inner-city buildings the place the proprietor can’t be discovered.
It specifies that the place courts deem it “simply and equitable”, no compensation needs to be paid. Thus far, that provision has not been invoked.
Urged by his South African-born billionaire adviser, Elon Musk, Trump has claimed this legislation goals to grab land from white individuals, and launched a refugee plan to resettle members of the Afrikaner minority within the US. Washington has claimed the group, who hint their roots to the primary Dutch settlers in 1652, are “victims of unjust racial discrimination”.
However few Afrikaners have expressed curiosity in relocating. “All we all know is we’re being inundated with individuals, with white farmers from South Africa,” Trump mentioned, referring to 59 Afrikaners his administration rapidly organized to fly to the US this month.
Inside South African industrial agriculture, which competes globally with nations together with Australia and Brazil, farmers are much more involved in regards to the US proposal for 30 per cent blanket tariffs on their nation’s items.
Removed from fleeing the nation, predominantly white Afrikaans farmers have helped increase exports — primarily consisting of fruit and wine — from $2bn in 2001 to just about $14bn in 2024. The trade total exported $13.7bn of produce final 12 months.
Agriculture stays one of many few South African industries that’s flourishing at the same time as total financial development has slowed to lower than 1 per cent yearly, and a 3rd of individuals are out of labor.
The agriculture sector was at the moment backed by financing of some 220bn rand ($12.3bn) from industrial banks, mentioned Wandile Sihlobo, chief economist of the Agricultural Enterprise Chamber of South Africa.
“That financing exhibits the extent of confidence within the present land reform course of,” mentioned Sihlobo, additionally an financial adviser to the president. “In a sector beneath siege, you wouldn’t be promoting $14bn of merchandise.”
Further reporting by David Pilling in London
