A law meant to correct historical injustice in South Africa became a subject of misinformation earning Africa’s biggest economy a damning indictment from the United States’ highest office. With the renewal of the two countries’ biggest trade agreement having expired last month, will South Africa be able to explain its way out of the predicament? Will the Trump administration reverse its position?
On May 21, President Donald Trump held an hour-long press conference with South African President Cyril Ramaphosa. The heated meeting broadcasted live in the Oval Office was punctuated with allegations of white genocide and Trump putting the South African leadership on the spot in front of the media. The visit of the South African delegation came weeks after Trump issued an executive order freezing all US aid to South Africa. The trigger for this move? South Africa’s Expropriation Act of 2024, a 49-page document that had been three decades in the making. Trump’s administration describes the new legislation as designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, with hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavoured landowners. Is that a fair representation of the act?
South Africa’s land issue has a long history. In 1913, the Natives Land Act came into force. This was just three years after the formation of the Union of South Africa in 1910, a British political merger that brought together four British colonies into a single territory – consolidating power, and streamlining administration and economic development. It also excluded black South Africans from political participation. The Natives Land Act prohibited black South Africans from buying or leasing land outside designated native reserves. The reserves were specific tracts of land set aside for black South Africans, which made up only 7-8% of the country’s total landmass at the time. They were often located in less fertile, remote regions, unsuitable for large-scale agriculture or livestock farming.
Black people who had previously lived or farmed on land outside these reserves were now considered illegal occupants. Eviction followed. Many were forced out and relocated to the designated native reserves. With no land to farm, the blacks were left with two limiting options to become labourers in white farms or work in the developing mining industry, which demanded cheap labour. Although the act was part of a broader colonial strategy, it laid the framework for tougher measures to come decades later. From 1913 to the late 1940s, land was the biggest divider of British colonialists and native South Africans, a majority of whom were black. But a drastic shift was about to take place with the coming to power of the Nationalist Party in 1948.
Global economic depression of the late 1920s to late 1930s and social shifts after World War II fuelled identity politics in South Africa. The National Party (1914-2005) was formed to defend the interests of Afrikaners. It included most of the Dutch-descended Afrikaners and many English-speaking whites. Capitalizing on identity politics and the fact that the black population had been barred from political participation, the party campaigned with a platform of racial separation and won the 1948 election. From 1948 to 1994, the Nationalist Party would enact numerous laws that institutionalized racism under apartheid. These laws criminalized interracial relationships by prohibiting mixed marriages (1949); classified citizens by race – i.e., black, white, coloured, and Indian – and required identity documents (1950); and segregated residential areas by race, forcibly relocating thousands of black South Africans.
Although these laws seemed to have succeeded in their first decade, a revolution beginning in the 1960s would rally support from within South Africa to all corners of the developed world, with world powers calling for an end to apartheid. By the late 1980s to early 1990s, it was clear that mounting pressure had made the apartheid government cede ground and reconsider. Apartheid was abolished in 1990. But total land restitution has never been fully resolved.
After abolishment of apartheid in 1990, 87% of land was still owned by white South Africans, despite them being less than 10% of the population.
But reforms had started taking shape. From 1990 to 1993, legislation that promoted racial segregation was repealed, and a whites-only referendum voted to end apartheid. A new constitution and the first election to include people of all races were scheduled for 1994. The new constitution recognized the need to address historical injustices, including land dispossession. Both parties agreed on the redistribution of state-owned land to historically disadvantaged individuals. This culminated in the reforms and land act of 1993.
The act empowered a land-distribution commissioner to oversee applications and transfers of land, prioritizing development and housing needs. It was a shift from racially exclusive land ownership to a more inclusive, state-led redistribution model. It also supported the resettlement of displaced communities, especially those affected by forced removals under apartheid. But the process of applying for land, verifying claims, and transferring ownership was slow and opaque. Then overlapping mandates between government departments created administrative gridlock. A year later, the Restitution of Land Rights Act of 1994 was passed, based on three major pillars:
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- Restitution, meaning the return of land and or compensation to those dispossessed after 1913 apartheid laws.
- Redistribution though the transfer of land to disadvantaged groups to promote equity and access.
- Securing legal rights for people living on land without formal ownership.
Since 1994, successive governments have been active in lobbying and overcoming hurdles to pave the way for just and equitable legislation. From the corridors of justice to the floors of parliament, the land issue culminated in the combative Land Expropriation Act of 2024 that was signed into law on January 25, 2025. Government data shows that the white population comprises about 7.3% of South Africa’s population, but owns 49% of urban land and 72% of agricultural land.
Is this new law as discriminatory and inhuman as President Trump suggested? Let’s investigate its provisions.
In short, the new law provides for the expropriation of all property, not just land, for a public purpose or in the public interest, which may include housing, infrastructure, or land reform. The law provides that expropriation will include payment of compensation. The compensation is required to be just and equitable based on market value. It also instructs that compensation be adjusted, reflecting current use of the property, history of acquisition of the property, state investment or subsidies, and purpose of expropriation.
But part of that legislation did not sit well with a majority of land owners; the law provided that in certain instances there will be nil compensation for expropriation in the public interest. This section was not void of safeguards. First, the land targeted under this section of the law would be: land already occupied or used by communities without formal title, land held purely for speculative purposes, or abandoned or state-subsidized land. In such a case, the expropriated property must align with the constitution as in Section 25 of the Constitution of the Republic of South Africa. Second, the expropriation of property would require court oversight, and, last, it would have no racial targeting.
That last part might have been the catalyst for many white South Africans fearing for their lives and seeking refugee status in the U.S. They had seen a similar exercise in neighboring Zimbabwe two decades earlier. At the time of Zimbabwe’s independence, the country’s new leadership agreed to a “willing buyer, willing seller” model for land reform. Land was bought using donor funds from the former colony for redistribution. However, greed favoured the elites and left millions of poor Zimbabweans waiting for land. By the turn of the millennium, pressure was mounting from war veterans over slow progress in land redistribution. In panic, Mugabe’s government began forcibly acquiring white-owned farms in 2000. White-owned farms were taken without compensation. The process was stained with violence and intimidation.
Back in South Africa, it is easy to see why this latest legislation is causing so much anxiety, but the government is firm that there are sufficient safeguards to protect all who live within the country’s borders.
Was the new law the only catalyst for Trump’s outburst toward South Africa? The second part of the executive order had an interesting point; the U.S. criticized South Africa’s move to take Israel, an ally of the U.S., to the International Court of Justice for genocide. The U.S. also expressed displeasure with South Africa-Iran co-operation on a number of issues.
So, what is next for South Africa-U.S. relations? Will the 25-year-old trade agreement between the two countries that expired last month be renewed? We could find out next month when Trump is expected to be in Johannesburg for the G20 summit, at which South Africa will hand over the summit presidency to the U.S.
(George Mutero, BIG Media Ltd., 2025)
