US President Donald Trump has accused South Africa of “confiscating” land and “treating certain classes of people very badly,” announcing he will cut off all future funding to the country pending an investigation.
Land reform in South Africa has been a contentious issue, with efforts to address historical inequalities drawing criticism from conservatives, including Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa and is a key Trump adviser.
Last month, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa signed a bill allowing the government to offer “nil compensation” for certain confiscated properties in the public interest.
“South Africa is confiscating land and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY,” Trump wrote on Truth Social on Sunday, February 2.
“I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed!” he added.
Pretoria maintains that the bill does not permit arbitrary expropriation of property, requiring the government to first seek an agreement with the owner.
However, some groups fear a repeat of Zimbabwe’s land seizures, where white-owned commercial farms were taken without compensation after independence in 1980.
Speaking to journalists, Trump criticised South Africa’s leadership, stating they were doing “terrible things, horrible things” without providing specific examples.
“So that’s under investigation right now. We’ll make a determination, and until 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,” he said.
Land ownership remains a highly sensitive issue in South Africa, where most farmland is still owned by white people nearly 30 years after the end of apartheid.
The South African government cites the 1913 Natives Land Act, which led to the forced removal of thousands of Black families from their land under apartheid.
The issue has been a rallying point for the right, with conservative figures such as Elon Musk and journalist Katie Hopkins advocating for white landowners.
Musk, born in Pretoria on June 28, 1971, to an engineer father and a Canadian-born model mother, left South Africa in his late teens. Apartheid formally ended in 1990, with South Africa holding its first multi-racial elections in 1994.
Trump has aligned himself with influential Silicon Valley figures who grew up in apartheid-era southern Africa, including David Sacks, his newly appointed AI and cryptocurrency advisor, and PayPal co-founder Peter Thiel, who spent time in Namibia when it was under South African rule.
