US Officials Intervene in South Africa's Land Reform Debate

A number of U.S. officials visited South Africa to study the seizure and expropriation of land in South Africa, along with the killing of farmers, as requested by Trump administration.

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On Aug. 1, 2018, the African National Congress (ANC) planned to change the constitution to allow the expropriation of land without compensation, which according to the party's Ronald Lamola was nothing new, “Land expropriation had been happening, but with compensation at market value," say Ronald Lamola.

The United States President Donald Trump got involved however, in August of 2018 with a customary incediary tweet, saying the South African government was "seizing land from white farmers."

A day before that, Tucker Carlson claimed that the South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa, had started “seizing land from his own citizens without compensation because they are the wrong skin color,” calling the alleged seizures “immoral,” reported the Guardian.

In response, the South Africa government said those allegations reflected a “narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past." Khusela Diko, a spokesperson for Ramaphosa, added that the government will privilege the diplomatic way to discuss this issue with the U.S.  

Mr Trump's comments have incited more ferver into the land reform debate in South Africa — a country that remains deeply racially divided and unequal nearly a quarter of a century after Nelson Mandela swept to power at the end of apartheid.

Patrick Gaspard, the country’s former ambassador to South Africa tweeted that Trump was “attacking South Africa with the disproven racial myth of ‘large-scale killings of farmers’. This man has never visited the continent and has no discernible Africa policy.”