The Current - Why Trump has South Africa in his sights

Episode Date: February 13, 2025

U.S. President Donald Trump seems preoccupied with South Africa. He’s offered asylum to white farmers who say they’re facing racial discrimination there, is skipping the G20 in Johannesburg and has restricted all aid to the country. The Globe and Mail's Africa Correspondent Geoffrey York explains why Trump has South Africa in his sights — and how much it has to do with Elon Musk.

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We are witnessing the rise of nationalism, protectionism, the pursuit of narrow interests and the decline of common cause. This is the world that we as South Africa must now navigate and we will not be bullied. South Africa's president Cyril Ramaphosa responding to recent moves by the United States. On Friday US President Donald Trump signed an executive order restricting all aid to South Africa. Trump says his administration is fighting discrimination against white Afrikaners

due to a new land reform law. Jeffrey York is the Africa bureau chief for the Globe and Mail. He's based in Johannesburg. Jeffrey, hello. Hello. Tell me about this executive order that Donald Trump signed on Friday. What does it ostensibly do? Well, ostensibly it freezes US foreign aid to South Africa.

You know, even that part of it is a bit ambiguous because we've already seen the it freezes US foreign aid to South Africa. You know, even that part of it is a bit ambiguous because we've already seen the Trump administration sort of climbing down on some of this. For example, the biggest form of US foreign aid to South Africa is a program called PEPFAR, which helps to subsidize the high cost of life-saving medicine for people with HIV.

And that program seemed to be frozen at first. There was huge panic. And now the Trump administration has been issuing waivers, saying that they will not cut off medicine in life-saving circumstances. So all sorts of programs are now applying for waivers to get exempted from this rule. So it's unclear what it really means, but it is very clear that the Trump administration is gearing up to punish South Africa as much as it can. Punish it in part because of a newly enacted

expropriation act. What is this act? Well, this expropriation act really, it's a bit of a red herring. It's not the threat to white South Africans that Trump is making it out to be. There's been no land confiscation. There's been no land grabs under this act, or even previously, since the ANC came into power after the end of apartheid in 1994, there

have been zero land grabs of farmland. All the land that has been redistributed under South Africa's land reform program, which is a very, very slow program that's taking a long time to make any progress at all, it's all been done so far on the basis of willing seller, willing buyer. And because it's been so slow, there's been a lot of political pressure for faster processes. And that's partly what this law is responding to. But it has so many built-in legal safeguards and references to the South African Constitution that really there's very little likelihood of any land grabs in the future either.

The South African courts have been incredibly strong and independent. Opposition groups and farmers and so on have been very quick to go to court to protect their rights, and so there's just no likelihood of any kind of large scale land grabs in the future either. And I should say that this new expropriation act, it has been overdue for decades. It is a replacement for an expropriation law that was brought in in 1975 under apartheid.

And of course that law was part of the land grabs that the white minority did under apartheid. And, you know, of course that law was part of the land grabs that the white minority did under apartheid. And now, finally, several decades later, the South African government is bringing in a law that updates the expropriation law, brings it in line with the South African Constitution, which in turn has all sorts of legal safeguards about land reform. It says that yes, there can be expropriation, but there has to be just and equitable compensation. Donald Trump says that South Africa is

confiscating land, treating certain classes of people very badly. This is a massive human rights violation. Elon Musk has said that this is a genocide against white farmers. And the executive order that Donald Trump signed last week also included an offer for Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.

Those are the words in the, in the executive order to come to the United States as refugees. As you point to, as I have pointed out, this is ironic since, um, Afrikaners are among the most economically privileged in South Africa and the Trump administration is denying asylum to poor people, um, around the world. What's been the response to, to this offer?

Well, really there's been a lot of ridicule. Uh, a lot of white South Africans have simply been mocking this idea that, uh, Afrikaners are discriminated against. Um, you know, it know, it's really quite laughable, this idea of the Afrikaners, the architects of apartheid, who are still among the richest and most privileged in the country, are somehow victims now. I mean, this notion has just been widely ridiculed across South Africa. And let's be honest here, a lot of what Donald Trump has been doing with these executive

orders is not foreign policy. It's appealing to his domestic base. It's a dog whistle to the people in his base, his followers, who have always had this kind of notion of white victimhood. He is explicitly claiming that whites are victims in South Africa. And perhaps if he says it about a country that is thousands and thousands of miles away,

people might believe it in the United States, but nobody believes it here. The impact of this though, and I wanna talk a bit more about Elon Musk and Amona, but the impact is being felt in South Africa. You also have the G20 that is going to be hosted by South Africa. The Secretary of State Marco Rubio says he's not going to attend those meetings because South Africa is promoting, in his words, diversity, equity, and other very bad things.

Yeah, that's right. And so the G20, the first G20 meeting is coming up in a few days, actually, meeting of foreign ministers on February 20th. You know, Canadian Foreign Minister Melanie Joliet said that she'll be there. And it'll be interesting to see how the other 19 members respond to this, and basically how the G20 becomes a group to work without the United States. And, you know, but it's clearly part of the Trump administration's kind of campaign against multilateralism.

They don't like multilateral institutions, they don't like the United Nations, and they don't like the G20. And they don't like South Africa because this whole idea that somehow South Africa is a DEI country, well, what do you expect? It's the rainbow nation.

It's one of the most racially diverse countries in the world. It lived through apartheid. It's struggling with how to have some form of justice and redress decades after apartheid ended. It's still grappling with these issues. So of course diversity is a huge issue in South Africa. What do they expect? What do you make of Elon Musk's role in this? He's the head of Donald

Trump's Department of Government Efficiency. He is a very close ally of Donald Trump's. He's also South African and has been very outspoken about this land law. What do we know about his motivation here? Well, it's really difficult to look inside his head and figure out what exactly is motivating him here. You know, some people speculate that because he grew up in an apartheid regime, he and his family left, that perhaps they're more familiar or comfortable with that kind of arrangement. I'm not able to say that, but some people have speculated that.

But we also know that Elon Musk has business interests in South Africa. He's been trying to bring in Starlink, the satellite internet service, and he has objected to the fact that South Africa has rules about affirmative action for black businesses. They would need to be involved in some way. And he has strongly objected to that. So it may be that he is looking for a quid pro quo here, some kind of concession from South Africa on his business deals.

You've said that this expropriation law isn't the only reason why Donald Trump would be targeting South Africa. And this has something to do with what's going on in the Middle East. Tell me more about that. Well, there's clearly a bunch of factors and I've mentioned some of them already,

a bunch of motivations for the Trump administration here. But it's also very clear that one of the factors is the South African case at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, where South Africa accused Israel of genocide in the Gaza Strip. I mean, this case has clearly embarrassed and angered the Israeli government. We saw that the latest executive order against South Africa that Trump signed on Friday, it explicitly mentions the ICJ case. And it came just a couple days

after Trump had extensive meetings with Prime Minister Netanyahu in the White House. So a lot of people think it's not a coincidence. There's a clear belief among many analysts and people inside the South African government that there's a connection here, that part of what Trump is trying to do here is to help Netanyahu by putting pressure on South Africa to withdraw this case. Now, there's other factors as well. It's also clear that

Donald Trump is very hostile to BRICS, this organization that South Africa belongs to. BRICS has made various steps to try to get away from the US dollar. These are the economies of Brazil and Russia and India and China. That's right. Those are the original five members, but now there's actually 10 members and it's been expanding and it's, it's dominated by China and Russia and Trump has been very angered by the

fact that Bricks is moving away from the US dollar. And it may be that he is looking at South Africa as possibly the weak underbelly of bricks. And he's going to launch an attack on bricks through South Africa. Need to let you go, but we heard the clip there from the South African president saying, we won't be bullied.

How are ordinary South Africans responding to this attention from the US president? Well, there is some nervousness and some anger, but it has to be said that so far it hasn't really hurt the economy. The stock market, the Rand and so on have not been suffering very much. So really it's a bit of a sideshow at this point,

but there is concern of course in the future that Trump could go further punishing South Africa in other ways that could cut deeper. Jeffrey, we'll leave it there. Good to talk to you as always. Thank you very much. Thank you. Jeffrey York is the Africa Bureau Chief

for the Global Mail. He was in Johannesburg. For more CBC podcasts, go to cbc.ca slash podcasts.