By Bhargav Acharya and Alexander Winning
JOHANNESBURG (Reuters) -South African President Cyril Ramaphosa defended his land reform policy on Monday against an attack by Donald Trump that laid bare deep divisions within South Africa over racial disparities in ownership, an issue festering since apartheid.
The U.S. president said on Sunday, without citing evidence, that “South Africa is confiscating land” and “certain classes of people” were being treated “very badly”, adding that he would cut off funding to the country in response.
Ramaphosa said the government had not confiscated any land and he looked forward to engaging with Trump to foster a better understanding over a policy he said ensures equitable public access to land.
Trump’s attack was echoed by his South African-born billionaire backer Elon Musk, who said in a post on X the country had “openly racist ownership laws”, suggesting white people were the victims.
White landowners possess three quarters of South Africa’s freehold farmland, compared with 4% for Black landowners. Black people make up about 80% of South Africa’s total population, while about 8% are white.
Ramaphosa signed into law a bill last month aimed at addressing the disparity by making it easier for the state to expropriate land in the public interest.
His African National Congress, the biggest party in the ruling coalition, accused Trump of amplifying misinformation propagated by AfriForum, a right-wing lobby group that promotes what it sees as the interests of white Afrikaans speakers.
The ANC said Trump’s attack was “a direct result of the lobby group’s ongoing efforts to mislead the global community and protect apartheid-era land ownership”.
AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel said his group would ask the U.S. government “to directly punish senior ANC leaders and not the people of South Africa” over land reform. A spokesperson confirmed the group had lobbied in the United States.
WORRIES OVER TRADE DEAL
The mostly white-led Democratic Alliance, the second-biggest party in the coalition government, said it wanted the land reform law to be amended to address certain flaws, but nevertheless corrected Trump on the specifics.
“It is not true that the Act allows land to be seized by the state arbitrarily, and it does require fair compensation for legitimate expropriations,” the DA said.
The mining minister, Gwede Mantashe of the ANC, said African countries should “withhold minerals” from the United States in response to any aid cut. Ramaphosa’s spokesperson Vincent Magwenya told Reuters those words should be “taken in jest” and the government was not seriously advocating such a policy.
Washington committed $440 million in assistance to South Africa in 2023, of which $315 million was for HIV/AIDS. Ramaphosa said U.S. funding accounted for 17% of South Africa’s HIV/AIDS programme but was not significant in other areas.
Bilateral relations were already strained because of South Africa’s warm relations with China and Russia, and its legal action against Israel, a staunch U.S. ally, which Pretoria accuses of genocide.
South Africa’s rand, stocks and government bonds fell after Trump’s comments, and economists said any U.S. measures against it could hurt the economy at a time when the U.S./Africa AGOA trade deal is due for renewal and Ramaphosa has been struggling to boost growth and attract investors.
“Do you want to set up a factory in a country where today, Trump’s cutting off all aid? Maybe tomorrow, he’s ripping up AGOA and maybe on Wednesday, he’s adding 25% tariffs because they’re too close to China” said Charles Robertson, an emerging markets specialist at FIM Partners.
South African exports to the U.S. through AGOA represented 1% of GDP in 2023, of which about half was transportation equipment, according to research by economist David Omojomolo of Capital Economics. He said 56% of exports from South Africa’s automotive sector were AGOA-eligible.
Trade Minister Parks Tau said the government would engage with the U.S. administration and both parties represented in Congress on the continuation of AGOA, which expires this year.
“We are optimistic that we will remain part of AGOA,” he told Reuters on the sidelines of an African mining conference in Cape Town.
(Additional reporting by Tannur Anders and Sfundo Parakozov in Johannesburg, Thando Hlophe in Pretoria, Wendell Roelf and Nqobile Dludla in Cape Town and Libby George in London; Writing by Estelle Shirbon; Editing by Andrew Cawthorne)
