Cape Town – The United States has announced new visa restrictions targeting certain foreign nationals linked to policies in South Africa that Washington says promote racial discrimination, uncompensated land seizures or incitement of violence against minority groups.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the measures on Tuesday, marking another escalation in tensions between Washington and Pretoria under President Donald Trump.
The policy targets people who are “responsible for, or complicit in” the enactment or implementation of laws or policies that the US says enable uncompensated land seizures, race-based discrimination or the incitement of imminent violence against minority ethnic or racial groups in South Africa.
According to the US Department of State, the restrictions are being imposed under Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the US Immigration and Nationality Act, which allows the secretary of state to restrict entry where a person’s presence could have potentially serious adverse foreign-policy consequences for the United States.
“The South African government has not adequately addressed the previously laid out concerns,” Rubio said.
As @POTUS has made clear, the South African people are being failed by a government that is destroying its economy through an obsessive pursuit of racial grievance against the Afrikaner minority. The South African government has consistently failed to adequately address rural…
— Secretary Marco Rubio (@SecRubio) September 15, 2026
The US statement said Washington remained “gravely concerned” about what it described as racially motivated crime and government-sponsored discrimination against Afrikaners and other minority groups in South Africa.
It also cited South Africa’s land reform programme and what Washington described as threats of land expropriation without compensation.
The restrictions come after a series of measures by the Trump administration that have strained relations with Pretoria.
Washington has previously cut aid to South Africa and expelled its ambassador, while Trump has also promoted claims of persecution of white South Africans that the South African government strongly rejects.
Pretoria has rejected allegations that South Africa is persecuting white people and has defended its land reform policies as part of efforts to address the country’s apartheid-era racial inequalities.
The latest US action is targeted rather than a blanket suspension of visas for South African nationals. Ordinary South African travellers are therefore not, on the face of the announcement, subject to a general visa ban.
The US announcement comes against the backdrop of wider changes to American visa processing in Africa.
The US State Department said in July that it was moving routine visa services from several African posts to regional hubs, including consolidating services from Durban while maintaining the US diplomatic presence there.
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Compiled by Betha Madhomu
