Some white South Africans showed support for President Donald Trump on Saturday and gathered at the US Embassy in Pretoria to claim they are victims of racism by their own government.
Hundreds of protesters held placards that read “Thank God for President Trump” and displayed other messages criticizing what they see as racist laws instituted by the South African government that discriminate against the white minority.
Many were from the Afrikaner community that Trump focused on in an executive order a week ago that cut aid and assistance to the Black-led South African government. In the order, Trump said South Africa’s Afrikaners, who are descendants of mainly Dutch colonial settlers, were being targeted by a new law that allows the government to expropriate private land.
The South African government has denied its new law is tied to race and says Trump’s claims over the country and the law have been full of misinformation and distortions.
Trump said land was being expropriated from Afrikaners — which the order referred to as “racially disfavored landowners” — when no land has been taken under the law. Trump also announced a plan to offer Afrikaners refugee status in the US. They are only one part of South Africa’s white minority.
In a speech to Parliament this week, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the forced removal of any people from their land will never be allowed in South Africa again after millions of Blacks were dispossessed of property under the apartheid system of white minority rule and hundreds of years of colonialism before that.
“The people of this country know the pain of forced removals,” Ramaphosa said. He said the land law does not allow any arbitrary taking of land and only refers to land that can be redistributed for the public good.
The Trump administration’s criticism and punishment of South Africa has elevated a long-standing dilemma in the country over moves to address the wrongs of centuries of white minority rule that oppressed the Black majority.
According to the government, the land law aims to fairly address the inequality that the majority of farmland in South Africa is owned by whites, even though they make up just 7% of the country’s population.
White protesters on Saturday held banners referencing the expropriation law but also other affirmative action policies put in place by the government since the end of apartheid in 1994 to advance opportunities for Blacks. Those laws, known as Black Economic Empowerment, have been a source of frustration for some white people.
Influential Trump adviser Elon Musk — who was raised in South Africa — has also criticized South Africa’s government and claimed it is anti-White for years, although some have questioned his motivations. He has recently failed to get a license for his Starlink satellite internet service in South Africa because it doesn’t meet the country’s affirmative action criteria.
While race has long framed South African politics, the country has been largely successful in reconciling its racially diverse people in the years after apartheid. The current government is made up of a coalition of 10 Black-led and white-led political parties that are working together.