South African President Cyril Ramaphosa will meet US President Donald Trump at the White House on Wednesday in an attempt to reset degradation ties between the two countries.
The main topic of competition between the two leaders is South Africa’s recent passing of Land Expropriation Act, which Trump denounced, stating, equaling the “persecution” of the country’s rich white minority.
Last week, the first set of white South African “refugees” landed in the United States as part of a massive relocation plan for the group under the Trump administration. The South African government has denied allegations of persecution or “white genocide” in the country.
Here’s what you need to know about the law:
What is the expropriation method?
President Ramaphosa signed the expropriation bill in January after months of debate in Congress due to opposition from the Democratic Alliance (DA) party, part of the coalition government.
The law allows the government to seize land from white or other private owners for public purposes or for public interest, such as infrastructure projects, expanding public services, environmental conservation, land reform, or equitable resource distribution purposes.
The law spells fair compensation, but in certain cases it also allows for seizures without compensation.
This replaced the 1975 Expropriation Act, drafted under apartheid, criticising it for being legally unknown and lacking a clear compensation plan.
However, some African groups say that new laws could see their land being confiscated presumably violently, which could cause a plunge in property values. The DA, a former opposition party of Ramaphosa’s African National Congress (ANC), is seen as representing mainly white people and African interests.
The White Africans are descendants of Dutch colonists who, until 1990, ruled the country under the apartheid system, which separated and excluded the majority of black people. Many of the nation’s most successful business leaders and farm owners are still white.
White South Africans also collectively own 70% of the country’s land, despite making up only 7% of the population.
Meanwhile, more than half of the black population is classified as poor. Only a few people have access to the land. The Ramaphosa government says the new law will help the government redistribute land into several categories of historically marginalized groups, such as black people, women and people with disabilities.
In a statement in February, Ramaphosa’s office said the law is not a “forfeiture” tool, but a necessary policy to distribute wealth evenly. Confiscation means a seizure on the land as punishment.
“The recently adopted expropriation law is not a means of forfeiture, but a constitutionally mandatory legal process that ensures public access to the land in a constitutionally guided and fair manner,” the statement read.
“South Africa, like the United States and other countries, always had an expropriation law that balances the public use of the land with the need to protect the rights of property owners,” the office said.
By mid-May, no land had been forced to be handed over by the South African government without compensation under the new law.
What did Trump and his allies say about the law?
In February, Trump ordered South Africa to cut US financial aid due to the country’s “unfair racism.” In his order, Trump cited allegations of confiscation of white-owned land, similar to the South African submission of a genocide incident against Israel over the war with Gaza at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December 2023.
“In shockingly and disregarding citizens’ rights, the Republic of South Africa (South Africa) recently enacted the Expropriation Act 13 (ACT) of 2024, allowing the South African government to seize the agricultural property of ethnic Africanars without compensation,” the order read.
“The United States cannot support the violation of the South African Government’s rights violations in the country, which cannot help undermine the US foreign policy that poses a national security threat to our country, its allies, African partners, and our interests,” Trump added.
Previously, the US provided HIV aid to South Africa through the president’s emergency plan for AIDS relief or the Pep-Far Initiative. When Trump suspended US foreign aid in January, that aid was already suspended.
Trump’s allies and South Africa-born entrepreneur Elon Musk are also highly critical of the land law, with some experts believed to be affecting Trump’s government’s policies targeting the country.
Musk accused the South African government of taking little action when stopping the “genocide” against white farmers. He also criticizes “racist ownership laws” for not launching his satellite internet business, Starlink, in the country. South African law requires that those seeking large corporations and government partnerships be partially owned by marginalized groups.
What other tensions exist between the two countries?
Trump also highlights allegations by a group of white South Africans who say white farmers are facing an uneven number of violent attacks on their farms.
The Ramaphosa government has denied these allegations and says that the deaths of farmers are part of the bigger crime problem. Farm attacks and murders are common due to the remoteness of the farm location. Both white and black farmers are targeting assaults, robberies and murders. The South African government has not released data on racially specific crimes.
The Gaza issue was also tense. The South African government filed an International Court of Justice lawsuit against Israel on December 29, 2023, denounced the rage of the United States, Israeli ally and major arms supplier, and “genocide” in its attack on Gaza.
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