Trump's open door to white South Africans buys into conspiracy theory
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South African farmer Tewie Wessels addresses a group of white South Africans in front of the U.S. Embassy in Pretoria. The white farmers support President Trump and South African tech billionaire Elon Musk. Photo: Marco Longari/AFP via Getty Images
President Trump has shut the door to asylum for migrants worldwide. But he's holding it open for white South Africans because of its controversial new law aimed at countering the lingering impact of apartheid.
Why it matters: Trump's offer last month to "resettle" white South Africans in the U.S. — and his moves to cut aid to South Africa — are signs that an Afrikaner group that has promoted a debunked "white genocide" conspiracy theory has Trump's ear.
State of play: The new law in question is South Africa's Expropriation Act, which allows the government to take some land and redistribute as part of a long-running effort to lessen the economic disparities created by apartheid.
- Under apartheid, which ended in 1994, South Africa's white minority government prevented Blacks from owning land or enjoying basic rights for nearly a half-century.
- Three decades later, South Africa's president and many other leaders are Black. But white people make up 7.3% of South Africa's population while owning 72% of the farmland, a disparity that continues to ripple through the economy.
- South Africa's new law is designed to work something like eminent domain in the U.S.: It allows the government to take land from private parties if it's in the "public interest," and allows for it to be done without compensation — but only if negotiations for a reasonable settlement fail.
The backstory: South Africa's apartheid generated college protests in the U.S. during the 1980s and 1990s and calls for boycotts of businesses that operated in South Africa at the time.
- Then-President Reagan and other white conservatives in the U.S. remained supportive of the apartheid regime over fears the country could turn communist.
Zoom in: Trump, whose assault on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) programs are rooted in the notion that affirmative action-type policies unfairly affect whites, has falsely accused South Africa of unfairly seizing Afrikaners' agricultural property and allowing attacks against white farmers.
- Trump's executive order said the U.S. would "prioritize humanitarian relief" and resettlement for "Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination."
Reality check: The Democratic Alliance, South Africa's most popular white-led political party, is made up of multiethnic voters and is challenging the land law.
- There's no evidence that white farmers are experiencing a spike in violence despite a few high-profile cases.
- A South African court dismissed claims of a "white genocide" as "clearly imagined and not real," in a ruling that blocked a bequest to an organization described in court documents as a white supremacist group, per The Washington Post.
Meanwhile, the nation's leading farmers' union says there've been no land confiscations since the expropriation law was passed.
- South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has said he wants to resolve the dispute over his country's land policy. But he hasn't said what that might involve.
- The White House didn't respond to a request for comment.
Between the lines: The Trump administration's moves on South Africa are in line with Trump reinterpreting Civil Rights-era laws to focus on "anti-white racism" rather than discrimination against people of color.
- The Afrikaner trade union publicly declined Trump's offer for resettlements in the U.S.
- Other South Africans have widely ridiculed Trump for his offer and statements about the new law.
But South African-born Elon Musk, a top Trump adviser, has peddled conspiracy theories that his native country is "pushing for genocide of white people."
- That belief is closely linked to a once-fringe idea called "white replacement theory," which imagines a plot to change nations' racial composition by enacting policies that reduce whites' political power.
- Some U.S. conservatives have repeated conspiracies about white replacement in South Africa. In 2018, Trump tweeted false information about South African land seizures and farmer killings after segments on Fox News.
What they're saying: "It's outright racist," Paul S. Landau, a University of Maryland historian and South African expert, says of allegations that whites there are under attack and of Trump's offer to resettle white South Africans.
- "The biggest people who face dispossession from their land rights in South Africa's history are Black women."
- Landau said there hasn't been any meaningful land reform since the fall of apartheid.
- He added that wealthy white South Africans such as Trump friends Musk and golfer Gary Player could visit and migrate to the U.S. during apartheid, while Black South Africans were forbidden from leaving.
