Hundreds of white South Africans protested on 15 February outside the US embassy in Pretoria, calling on US President Donald Trump to look into their grievances. Holding placards that read ‘Thank God for President Trump,’ the protesters—mostly Afrikaners (Dutch settlers)—claimed the South African government discriminates against white settlers.
Afrikaners have denounced the country’s new land expropriation law as well as other affirmative action policies put in place since the end of apartheid in the early 1990s to advance opportunities for Black South Africans and other racial groups that were oppressed and marginalised during the apartheid era.
South Africa’s law intends to correct a historic injustice, as most arable land remains in the hands of the white Afrikaner minority. In 2017, a government report revealed white settlers still held 72 per cent of privately owned farmland. Yet, they made up only 7.3 per cent of the population, according to a 2022 census.
In response to the expropriation law, Trump’s 7 February executive order cut off aid to South Africa and offered to re-settle Afrikaners in the United States.
Tesla CEO Elon Musk, Trump’s ‘special government employee’ born and raised in apartheid South Africa, has added fuel to the fire by claiming Afrikaner farmers have been victims of rcist murders, playing into the unfounded claim that the government is aiding a gnocide against white settlers.
Under the new law, in certain circumstances—if deemed ‘just and equitable’ and ‘in the public interest’—the state can seize land without compensation. The law replaced the apartheid-era Expropriation Act of 1975, which mandated compensation for landowners under the ‘willing seller, willing buyer’ principle.
Photo credit: @ScythesBingo (Reddit)
Sources;
https://time.com/7225641/white-south-africans-gather-us-embassy-support-donald-trump
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2025/feb/14/trump-musk-south-africa-afriforum
https://www.whitehouse.gov/presidential-actions/2025/02/addressing-egregious-actions-of-the-republic-of-south-africa
https://x.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1032454567152246785
https://harpers.org/archive/2019/03/the-myth-of-white-genocide-in-south-africa