According to the United States president, Donald Trump cited a recent land expropriation law passed by the nation, which the president and his allies claim discriminates against white farmers, as well as an executive order that would stop aid to South Africa.
However, the aid block is only the start of a string of US-South African tensions that continued to grow even under the former president Joe Biden’s rule and have since expanded under Trump.
We examine the two countries’ bilateral ties as they continue to decline and what each of them stands to lose in the event of further deterioration.
What did Trump say when he rebuffed aid from South Africa?
Trump stated on his Truth Social platform on February 2 that “South Africa is seizing land and treating some classes of people very badly.”
” The United States won’t stand for it, we will act, “he wrote”. I’ll stop funding South Africa in the future without completing a thorough analysis of the situation.
According to the executive order signed by Trump on February 7, the government of South Africa was able to seize agricultural land belonging to the ethnic minority Afrikaners without compensation as a result of the law’s adoption in December.
” 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, “the order said.
The following day, he doubled down on those comments while addressing reporters”. Terrible things are happening in South Africa, “he said, referring to the land law.
The US also made the suggestion in the executive order to resettle Afrikaaner South Africans, which has been rejected by various Afrikaaner organizations, including those who have pressed for Trump to specifically oppose the South African government.
Has South Africa been attacked by Trump aides as well?
The broadsides against South Africa have been unrelenting since the US president’s initial comments, from Marco Rubio to Elon Musk, a US secretary of state.
A day after Trump’s initial comments, when South African President Cyril Ramaphosa defended the land law on X, Musk – the richest man in the world – responded:” Why do you have openly racist laws? “
On Wednesday, Rubio announced on X that he” will NOT attend G20 summit in Johannesburg. South Africa is putting up a lot of bad blood. Expropriating private property. “
The G20 bloc’s 20 largest economies’ leaders will meet in South Africa on February 20 and 21 for a meeting of their foreign ministers.
What’s the truth about the land law?
According to Al Jazeera’s Qaanitah Hunter, South Africa’s government has argued that any land seizures will be “constitutionally mandated legal process” and that there has not been any forcible confiscation.
Experts have criticized claims that South Africa’s law is in any way comparable to Zimbabwe’s forced land confiscation since the 2000s.
The South African Constitution forbids arbitrary land acquisition and generally allows for compensation. Additionally, it requires that authorities first try to resolve a dispute with the landowner first, unless otherwise the land is expropriated.
Land can only be expropriated for public purposes – such as to build schools, hospitals or highways – or for public interest, which includes land reform. More than three decades after the end of apartheid, South Africa’s minority white community – which constitutes 7 percent of the population – controls more than 70 percent of the country’s land.
White farmers in South Africa have long been Trump’s preoccupation.
In 2018, during his first term in office, Trump alleged that South Africa had witnessed” large-scale killings “of white farmers. No proof is present to support the assertion, and at the time, South Africa claimed that Trump was lying.
However, tensions between the countries didn’t end during Biden’s four years as president, even though Trump’s attacks on South Africa are in line with the narrative of the US president’s political movement’s long-held belief that white victimhood.
In fact, they rose.
Has South Africa’s position on Israel affected US ties?
In early 2024, South Africa’s then-foreign minister, Naledi Pandor, flew to the US on a crisis management trip.
More than 61, 000 people have been killed in Israel’s brutal war on Gaza, many of whom have been presumed dead, while the US Congress was examining a bill to punish South Africa.
Israel was charged with genocide in Gaza by South Africa in December of that year at the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Since then, the ICJ has passed interim orders against Israel, while many countries have joined South Africa’s case.
Some US members of Congress decided that South Africa had to pay a price, but the ICJ has yet to render its final decision.
The US-South Africa Bilateral Relations Review Act, which was passed in the US House on February 6, 2024, accused South Africa of supporting “malign actors,” including Hamas, a US-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization and a proxy for the Iranian regime.
In Washington, Pandor tried to meet members of Congress and spoke to think tanks to articulate the apartheid-era roots of South Africa’s opposition to Israel’s policies against Palestine, and the genocidal war in Gaza.
Although the bill is still pending, Rubio and Trump both mentioned South Africa’s Israel policy in their most recent comments.
” South Africa has taken aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide in the International Court of Justice, and reinvigorating its relations with Iran to develop commercial, military, and nuclear arrangements, “the executive order said.
What are the “aggressive” actions South Africa has taken against the US, though? Rubio also accused South Africa of” anti-Americanism”. What was he talking about?
The deeper strategic tension that has been lingering on ties for some time can be seen in the 2024 bill in Congress.
Is South Africa preferring China and Russia over the US?
The 2024 bill accuses South Africa of pursuing” closer ties with the People’s Republic of China (‘ PRC ‘) and the Russian Federation”.
The US ambassador to South Africa charged that the nation had docked a secretly at a naval base close to Cape Town in May 2023 with providing weapons to Russia for its conflict with Ukraine.
An investigation , by the South African government , concluded , in September 2023 that” no evidence “was found for claims that South Africa supplied weapons to Russia. Ramaphosa said the allegation” had a most damaging effect on our currency, our economy, and our standing in the world, in fact, it tarnished our image”.
Earlier that year, in February 2023, South Africa, Russia and China held joint military exercises in the Indian Ocean. The US responded by saying it was” concerned”.
And Pretoria has been careful to balance relations between Russia and China, on the one hand, and the US and its allies, on the other.
South Africa continues to trade with Israel despite the ICJ case, where it was the country’s top supplier of coal for some time over the past year despite being the subject of domestic accusations of hypocrisy.
In addition, South Africa persuaded Russian President Vladimir Putin to abstain from the BRICS summit it hosted last year. The International Criminal Court, which has detained Putin due to the conflict in Ukraine, has a presence there. ICC members are expected to make arrests for those who have warrants against them.
What’s at risk if relations decline further?
South Africa is the US’s biggest trading partner in Africa, according to this Al Jazeera explainer from 2024, with $ 9.3 billion in US exports going to South Africa in 2022. About 600 US businesses operate in the country.
South Africa serves as the US’s most important strategic partner because it serves as its democratic protectorate against authoritarianism in a region with a history of post-liberation movements.
There’s plenty at stake for South Africa, too.
Though China is by far South Africa’s largest trading partner, the US is the fourth-largest source of its imports – after China, Germany and India – and the second-biggest destination for its exports, after China, according to the Observatory of Economic Complexity (OEC).
South Africa benefits from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a US law passed by Congress in 2000 that grants many sub-Saharan nations, including South Africa, duty-free access to US markets for 1, 800 products. South African exports to the US in 2022 stood at almost $11bn, OEC data shows.
Trump’s concern about trade agreements, which he consider to be unfair to the US, is now a symptom of the AGOA’s concern for the relationship.
Source: Aljazeera
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