‘Cheap politics’ – FW de Klerk Foundation warns Trump’s actions could harm SA

Christo van der Rheede

Cape Town – The FW de Klerk Foundation has come out in opposition to US President Donald Trump’s claims about the treatment of white South African farmers and his offer of US citizenship to those seeking refuge.

Speaking during an interview with SABC News, Christo van der Rheede, executive at the FW de Klerk Foundation, said that Trump’s actions are based on disinformation, warning that his rhetoric and policies could harm South Africa’s economy and agricultural sector.

Van der Rheede argued that crime, unemployment, and poor economic policies affect all South Africans, not just white farmers.

“The challenges we face in South Africa are not just limited to white people. All of us are affected by crime, unemployment and ill-conceived policies, especially economic ones,” said.

Van der Rheede condemned Trump’s stance as part of an ethnic nationalist revival seen in various countries and as an attempt to undermine South Africa’s non-racial democracy.

“It is part of an ethnic nationalist revival. We have seen it happening in the US, France, Hungary and many European states and the South African right wing has seen this as an opportunity to confront the non-racial democratic dispensation that was founded in 1994,” Van der Rheede said.

He added: “If you read the Constitution, it says it belongs to all of the people that live in it. It talks a non-racial, non-sexist society, an accountable and responsive government and that is what we as South Africans should challenge.”

Trump on Friday reiterated his unfounded claims about land confiscation and announced a suspension of federal financing to South Africa.

He posted on his Truth Social platform that “any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship”.

Trump said the process would begin immediately, calling the country a “bad place to be right now” as he announced a halt to all US aid to Pretoria.

Trump and Pretoria are locked in a diplomatic row over a land expropriation act that the Republican leader says will lead to the takeover of white-owned farms.

The South African presidency swiftly responded, saying in a statement that it would not engage in “counterproductive megaphone diplomacy”.

“We are not going to partake in counterproductive megaphone diplomacy,” presidency spokesperson Vincent Magwenya said, adding the country remained “committed to building a mutually beneficial bilateral trade, political and diplomatic relationship with the United States, in particular the Trump administration.”

Trump, whose close aide Elon Musk was born in South Africa, said in February that a law signed the previous month would “enable the government of South Africa to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation”.

The law stipulates that the government may, in certain circumstances, offer “nil compensation” for property it decides to expropriate in the public interest.

English and Afrikaner colonists ruled South Africa until 1994 under a brutal system in which the black majority were deprived of political and economic rights.

The new law is intended to address historic inequalities in land ownership, with the minority white population still owning most farmland three decades after the end of apartheid.

But Trump accused the country of “being terrible, plus, to long time Farmers in the country”.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has said he wants to find agreement with the new US government on diplomatic, trade and other issues.

Ramaphosa announced in February that Pretoria plans to send a delegation to Washington to settle a host of issues.

“We would like to go to the United States to do a deal,” he said in a discussion with Goldman Sachs vice chairman Richard Gnodde.

“We don’t want to go and explain ourselves, we want to go and do a meaningful deal with the United States on a whole range of issues,” he said.

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Compiled by Betha Madhomu

Additional information by AFP

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