Trump to cut SA funding over land reform law

US President Donald Trump has said he will cut all future funding to South Africa over allegations that it was confiscating land and ‘treating certain classes of people very badly’. BBC News reports that last month, President Cyril Ramaphosa signed into law a Bill that allows land seizures without compensation in certain circumstances. Land ownership has long been a contentious issue in South Africa with most private farmland owned by white people, 30 years after the end of the racist system of apartheid. There have been continuous calls for the government to address land reform and deal with the past injustices of racial segregation. ‘South Africa is a constitutional democracy that is deeply rooted in the rule of law, justice and equality. The South African Government has not confiscated any land,’ Ramaphosa responded in a statement on X today. Elon Musk, who was born and grew up in South Africa and is now a Trump adviser, has also joined in the debate. ‘Why do you have openly racist ownership laws?’ Musk said to Ramaphosa in a post on X. On Sunday, Trump wrote on his social media platform Truth Social: ‘I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed!’ He later said, in a briefing with journalists, that South Africa's ‘leadership is doing some terrible things, horrible things’. ‘So that's under investigation right now. We'll make a determination, and until such time as we find out what South Africa is doing – they're taking away land and confiscating land, and actually they're doing things that are perhaps far worse than that.’ Ramaphosa said that the only funding South Africa received from the US was through the health initiative Pepfar, which represented ‘17% of South Africa's HIV/Aids programme’. The US allocated about $440m (£358m) in assistance to South Africa in 2023, according to US Government data.

The new law was not a ‘confiscation instrument, but a constitutionally mandated legal process that ensures public access to land in an equitable and just manner as guided by the Constitution’, Ramaphosa said, according to the BBC report. The new law allows for expropriation without compensation only in circumstances where it is ‘just and equitable and in the public interest’ to do so. Until now, the land had only allowed the government to buy land from its current owners under the principle of ‘willing seller, willing buyer’, which some feel has delayed the process of land reform. However, some critics have expressed fears that the law may have disastrous consequences like in Zimbabwe, where land seizures wrecked the economy and scared away investors.

Civil society group AfriForum has announced that it will prevent the Expropriation Act’s promulgation, saying it significantly jeopardises private property rights and must be opposed to the end’. A Polity report says during a media briefing in Pretoria, AfriForum announced its three-point plan for fighting the Act, which it said would include an anti-promulgation action, legal action and an international awareness campaign against the Act. ‘Under section 101(2) of the Constitution, a Minister must countersign if the Act affects a function assigned to the relevant Minister. However, if Minister of Public Works & Infrastructure Dean Macpherson countersigns the Act, AfriForum is prepared to take him and President Cyril Ramaphosa to court due to the irrationality of their actions,’ said AfriForum’s Ernst van Zyl. He added the organisation would test the constitutionality of the Expropriation Act in court, explaining that according to AfriForum’s legal team, the organisation has good grounds to do so. He noted that the main objection it had against the constitutionality of the Act was the fact that the Constitution required just and equitable compensation. ‘However, the Act expressly provides for nil compensation in specific cases, but those cases are not limited. AfriForum maintains that this creates serious risks for arbitrary actions by expropriation authorities,’ he stated. AfriForum will also approach international role players and inform them about the risks and AfriForum’s criticism of the law.