President Donald Trump stated on Friday that South African farmers were welcome to settle in the United States, reaffirming his claims that the government was “confiscating” land from white people, and declared an end to federal support.
Trump announced on his Truth Social platform that “any farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to citizenship.”
He declared the nation a “bad place to be right now” and said the process would start immediately. He also declared that all US aid to Pretoria would be cancelled.
Trump and Pretoria are embroiled in a diplomatic dispute over a property expropriation act that the Republican leader claims would result in the acquisition of farms owned by white people.
The president of South Africa quickly reacted, declaring in a statement that it would refrain from using “counterproductive loudhailer diplomacy.”
Trump, whose close aide Elon Musk was born in South Africa, said in February that a bill approved the month before would “enable the government of South Africa to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation.”
According to the law, the government may, under specific conditions, provide “nil compensation” for property that it chooses to expropriate in the public interest.
South Africa was brutally dominated by English and Afrikaner colonists until 1994, depriving the black majority of their political and economic rights.
Three decades after the end of apartheid, the majority of farmland is still owned by white people, a historical disparity in property ownership that the new law aims to rectify.
However, Trump said the nation was “being terrible, plus, to long-time farmers in the country.”
On trade, diplomacy, and other matters, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has stated his desire to reach a consensus with the new US administration.
Ramaphosa declared in February that Pretoria would send a delegation to Washington to resolve several concerns.
According to him, “We would like to go to the United States to do a deal,” when speaking with Richard Gnodde, vice chairman of Goldman Sachs.
“We don’t want to go and explain ourselves; we want to go and do a meaningful deal with the United States on a whole range of issues,” he explained.
Soon after the US president took office in January, Ramaphosa claimed to have had a “wonderful” phone conversation with Trump. However, he said that things “seemed to go a little bit off the rails” afterward.
While far-right conspiracy theorist Laura Loomer, who accompanied Trump to campaign events, expressed concerns about increasing immigration in the United States, many of Trump’s prominent fans praised his leadership on social media.
“First, we should try to increase the number of mass deportations. She said on X that “immigration won’t improve if more people arrive while deportation rates stay incredibly low.”
