Earlier this month, President Trump issued an executive order to freeze all American aid to South Africa and give the position of refugees to the white Afron who want to leave the country. According to the White House and Elon Musk, the South African government is distinguished against white South Africa, specifically by enacting a draft law to cancel land in January. The draft law allows this government, in certain circumstances, to take land owned by the private sector – the majority of which are still kept by white persons, who make up less than ten percent of the population – for public use. Musk, who grew up in South Africa, made more extremist statements about X, including allegations that black politicians from South Africa are planning to implement the genocide against the country’s white minority.
To understand what is going on around the land reform bill, and why it has become one of the basic things for extreme right -wing activists all over the world, I recently spoke over the phone with William Chocke, editor Africa is a countryAnd a member Amandla! Journal Editorial Group. During our conversation, which was liberated for length and clarity, we discussed the reason for the abuse of the extreme right in the last three decades of the history of South Africa, the strange roots of the flirtation of Elon Musk with anti -Semitism, and the real disappointment in the post -Ramla era.
What is the case of white black relations in South Africa in 2025?
It is very difficult to pick up. Even Trump’s number of this executive and nationalist command that raised it, I thought that black and white relations in South Africa had reached a period of stable cohabitation, as it was not as if it were the most error line in South Africa’s policy. It is clear that it is still waving on the horizon, but I believe that the 2024 elections have shown that some political rift lines that will be decisive in the future of South Africa to a large extent between the black majority and inside it. [In last year’s elections, for the first time since the end of apartheid, the African National Congress lost its majority, hemorrhaging Black support to other political parties.] I felt as if South Africa was in this country, thirty years after the end of the apartheid, it was up to its severity. Relationships are no longer race and race, although they are still prominent in shaping political and social life, are the prevailing lines of social polarization.
The population is eighty -one percent of Africa, with a large number of people who are considered “multi -ethnic” “”colored“The formation of eight others or so on. I understood that the white population in South Africa has been greatly reconciled with the rule of the black majority. What raises concern about this last escalation is that it shows the extent of this is the case anymore.
What happened inside South Africa since Trump Musk escalated to make you think it’s less settlement?
It is clear that Trump and Musk have swamped this narration that South Africa, especially the egg Africans, who are about half of the white population – who, in total, is 4.5 million people – they are a besieged minority and that they are victims of their precaution. Economic. This is now, with the approval of the confiscation law, they face threats to get rid of à la Zimbabwe in the early thousands.
Giving legitimacy to this policy means that it is now expressed in the open. During the weekend, for example, there was a gathering at the American embassy, which was held by an extremist right -wing influence, participating in the low thousands. People were expressing the desire to self -determination. The old old anthem was rich, “DIE Ste”. There were big banners that make South Africa great again. And you wonder what it means to make South Africa great again. So I think what has been rejected once as extremist and margin views are now the political current. There is freedom that Trump granted and hold these voices to push and motivate this racist grievance policy, which is not completely failing from the social reality of South Africa.
What was the land reform bill to do?
The confiscation law of 2024 provides the legal framework for the construction of property in South Africa, for public purposes or in the public interest. It aims to regulate the confiscation compensation process, and determine cases that cannot be justified. This is the most controversial part of the bill. The way I read many of these far -right forces is that this ruling is that it gives the state selective Blanche to remove the Afkan from their property automatically without reasons to do so. But, in reality, it does not stipulate this. It does not stipulate any compensation only in specific circumstances, a fair zero compensation can be considered. The courts have the final statement about whether the decisions are fair.
The law aims to replace the Apartheid Age of Age, which provides for confiscation of the use of the so -called “buyer, the borrowed seller” model. Basically, the state can confiscate the appropriate lands only if it can meet the market value of the piece from the land that wanted to confiscate. The market value was mired in determining the value of the plot that the state considered to be confiscated. What this dispensing says is that it must be fair and fair. So the market value is not soaked in determining how to reach compensation, and you have to think about a full range of other factors, including current use and real estate history, state investments and subsidies in the property, and the purpose of confiscation. Thus, part of what allows this act in the states is to support land reform. This is part of the most disturbing right -wing forces at the international level. They see this and hold the ghost of confiscation in the style of Zimbabwe.
This was when the government of Robert Mugabe confiscated the land in Zimbabwe in a very aggressive way. But Mugabe was a dictator and the process was completely different from what is happening in South Africa now, right?
definitely. South Africa is a constitutional democracy. Each case of confiscation is subject to judicial review and is also associated with restrictions not only action but the African constitution itself, which, although it provides for land reform on the one hand, does not provide for the arbitrary deprivation of ownership. There is a full section of the constitution dedicated to property. Thus, what the right -wing of the right did is to cause panic, and they used this speech as a country to try to overcome politics – which aims to recover historical – and reduce it to another example of Dei using American terms.
My understanding of the three contracts after the apartheid in South Africa, during which the African National Congress of the country is running, is that the African National Congress-which had relations with communist organizations inside the country and abroad-did not participate in any extremist policies regarding the cancellation of southern capitalism Africa or follow -up behind the apartheid. Basically, there were moderate governments in support of capitalism. People like you have written criticism from the African National Congress Party along these lines and on government corruption waste. The presentation of this terrestrial reform bill as is about the extremist black people trying to overturn the current situation is just a complete wrong reading over the past thirty years.
This is true, and I think this is what was very ridiculous about this gathering that happened during the weekend. This right -wing extremist influence was held by William Petzer. They were submitting a note to the United States embassy, in Pretoria, and delivered a thirteen -minute letter trying to date the memorandum and the allegations that were submitted, in an attempt to provide theoretical foundations about the reason for reading these amazing groups in the south of the African history they are doing. Petzer wakes up behind the platform and says that the African National Congress Party is not Marxist and that its black economic empowerment and all its positive policies have not benefited from the vast majority of South Africa black. He only implanted the black nails.
