Trump freezes South Africa aid over land expropriation law – National | Globalnews.ca

President Donald Trump signed an govt order Friday formalizing his announcement earlier this week that he’ll freeze help to South Africa for a law aiming to handle a few of the wrongs of South Africa’s racist apartheid period — a law the White Home says quantities to discrimination in opposition to the nation’s white minority.

“So long as South Africa continues to help unhealthy actors on the world stage and permits violent assaults on harmless disfavored minority farmers, the US will cease aid and help to the nation,” the White Home mentioned in a abstract of the order. The White Home mentioned Trump can be going to announce a program to resettle white South African farmers and their households as refugees.

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Trump was responding to a brand new law in South Africa that provides the federal government powers in some situations to expropriate land from folks. The White Home mentioned the law “blatantly discriminates in opposition to ethnic minority Afrikaners.”

The Expropriation Act was signed into law by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa final month and permits the federal government to take land in particular situations the place it isn’t getting used, or the place it will be within the public curiosity whether it is redistributed.

It goals to handle a few of the wrongs of South Africa’s racist apartheid period, when Black folks had land taken away from them and had been pressured to reside in areas designated for non-whites.

Elon Musk, a detailed Trump ally and head of Trump’s new Division of Authorities Effectivity, has highlighted that law in current social media posts and forged it as a menace to South Africa’s white minority.

The order additionally references South Africa’s position in bringing accusations of genocide in opposition to Israel earlier than the Worldwide Courtroom of Justice.

The halt in overseas aid to South Africa comes amid a broader pause to most U.S. abroad help beneath Trump, as he seems to be to shift to what he calls an “America First” overseas coverage.