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Donald Trump has vowed to halt all future US assistance to South Africa over its land expropriation policies, triggering a fall in the rand.
The US president claimed recent measures enabled the government to confiscate property unfairly and accused South African authorities of treating “certain classes of people VERY BADLY”.
He added: “I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed!”
Trump’s comments, made on Truth Social, sparked a 1.6 per cent fall in the South African currency against the US dollar.
He later told reporters that South Africa’s leadership was engaged in “some terrible things, horrible things” and suggested, without providing evidence or details, that the situation was worse than land confiscation alone.
President Cyril Ramaphosa last month signed an expropriation bill into law that allows land to be seized without compensation in certain conditions if the government believes it is “in the public interest”.
The legislation replaces one dating from the apartheid era, during which thousands of non-white families were forcibly removed from their land for the benefit of a white minority.
Three decades into multiracial democracy, about a quarter of farmland is owned by Black South Africans, who represent 80 per cent of the population. The government aims to transfer a third of land to Black people by 2030. The “land question” remains highly explosive.
It has also been a testing issue for the country’s 10-party coalition. The pro-business Democratic Alliance, a traditional rival of Ramaphosa’s African National Congress, has said it “strongly opposes” the new law and said it may challenge it in the courts.
The US set aside nearly $440mn in assistance to South Africa in 2023, the last year for which data was available. The Trump administration has paused all foreign assistance for 90 days and has cast the future of the main US international aid agency in doubt as its website has gone dark and dozens of employees have been placed on leave.
Elon Musk, a close Trump ally and head of the Department of Government Efficiency, is originally from South Africa.
Other powerful Trump advisers had formative experiences in apartheid South Africa, including David Sacks, who has been appointed his cryptocurrency tsar.
Peter Thiel, the billionaire PayPal cofounder and another Trump acolyte, spent part of his childhood in apartheid-ruled Namibia and South Africa, where his father worked for the white minority government. Thiel has been accused of supporting apartheid, which violently subjugated a Black majority to uphold white economic and political power, a claim he has denied.
Ramaphosa last month told reporters in Davos that he was “not worried” about relations and that he and Trump had spoken after the US president was elected. South Africa holds the presidency of the G20 this year.
In his first term, Trump said his government would investigate claims of widespread killings of white farmers. The South African government has dismissed these allegations as unsubstantiated.
Trump has previously targeted the Brics nations, of which South Africa is a member, threatening them with 100 per cent tariffs should they move away from the US dollar as a reserve currency.