{"id":1923,"date":"2018-09-20T01:32:07","date_gmt":"2018-09-20T01:32:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/?p=1923"},"modified":"2018-09-21T00:21:41","modified_gmt":"2018-09-21T00:21:41","slug":"south-africa-slams-trump-over-farm-seizures-tweet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/2018\/09\/20\/south-africa-slams-trump-over-farm-seizures-tweet\/","title":{"rendered":"South Africa slams Trump over ‘farm seizures’ tweet"},"content":{"rendered":"

The South African government lashed out at President Donald Trump on Thursday after he tweeted that his administration would be looking into farm seizures and the \u201clarge scale killing of farmers\u201d in South Africa.<\/h2>\n

The government said\u00a0Trump\u2019s<\/a>\u00a0tweet was based on \u201cfalse information\u201d and reflected a \u201cnarrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past.\u201d It said it was meeting with the\u00a0U.S.<\/a>\u00a0Embassy as it sought to clarify Trump\u2019s remarks.<\/p>\n

South Africa<\/a>\u00a0is in the throes of a racially charged national debate over land reform, a lawful process that seeks to correct the legacy of decades of white minority rule that stripped blacks of their land<\/p>\n

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Today, nearly a quarter-century after the first democratic elections, black South Africans, who comprise 80 percent of the population, still own just 4 percent of the country\u2019s land, according to the government.<\/p>\n

Though the ruling\u00a0African National Congress<\/a>, which has been in power since 1994, has pledged to close that gap, progress has been slow. In July, President\u00a0Cyril Ramaphosa<\/a>\u00a0said his party would amend the constitution so the state could expropriate land without compensation to speed up the land reform process.<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s tweet followed a segment on Fox News on Wednesday in which host Tucker Carlson claimed Ramaphosa had already started \u201cseizing land from his own citizens without compensation because they are the wrong skin color,\u201d calling the alleged seizures \u201cimmoral.<\/p>\n

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Though South Africa\u2019s constitution has not yet been amended and the government has not seized any major\u00a0agricultural<\/a>\u00a0land, the prospect has sent panic through some white farming communities who worry the policy will strip them of their land, cause land prices to plummet or make them the target of potentially violent land seizures.<\/p>\n

For years, a small but vocal group of white South Africans have claimed white farmers are the target of violent, racially motivated farm attacks.<\/p>\n

Experts say the attacks reflect the country\u2019s generally high crime rate and that there is no evidence connecting them to victims\u2019 race. In 2016-17, there were 74 murders that occurred during farm attacks, according to Africa Check, compared to 19,000 murders across the country in the same period.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople are not being targeted because of their race, but because they are vulnerable and isolated on the farms,\u201d said Gareth Newham, head of the crime and justice program at the Institute for Security Studies in the capital, Pretoria.<\/p>\n

\u201cThere is no white genocide in South Africa,\u201d Julius Malema, leader of the opposition Economic Freedom Fighters party, told reporters. \u201cThere is black genocide in the USA; black people are killed every day. There is a black genocide here in South Africa; just recently a farmer was convicted for the murder of a black farmer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump\u2019s tweet did find some supporters.<\/p>\n

AfriForum, a group that represents some white South African interests, welcomed his comments. In May, its leaders went to the U.S. to lobby institutions and politicians about Ramaphosa\u2019s proposal to expropriate land and the alleged targeting of white farmers.<\/p>\n

Earlier this month the group posted a list of farms it said were earmarked for expropriation, a list that the government said was fake.<\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone in South Africa should hope that the pressure from the USA will lead to the (ruling party) reconsidering the disastrous route that they want to take South Africa on,\u201d AfriForum\u2019s CEO Kallie Kriel said in a statement on Thursday.<\/p>\n

AfriForum and other critics of the government\u2019s proposal to expropriate land without compensation say the policy could lead to economic disaster, pointing to the collapse of the agricultural sector in neighboring\u00a0Zimbabwe<\/a>\u00a0after the government of former President\u00a0Robert Mugabe<\/a>\u00a0began seizing white-owned farms, sometimes violently, in 2000.<\/p>\n

Proponents of South Africa\u2019s land expropriation policy, including Ramaphosa, say it is necessary to address the country\u2019s historic injustices and can be done in a way that is lawful and will not compromise the beleaguered economy or food security.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt is absolutely unbelievable that a head of state at that level can be so disrespectful to issues of dispossession that South Africa is painfully trying to address in a democratic way,\u201d Vuyo Mahlati, president of the African Farmers\u2019 Association of South Africa, said of Trump.<\/p>\n

In parliament on Wednesday, Ramaphosa said land expropriation could make more land available for cultivation, and that the process would begin by seizing state-owned land, not privately held land.<\/p>\n

\u201cThis is our South Africa, this is our land, this is where we live,\u201d Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Maite Nkoana-Mashabane told South Africa\u2019s public broadcaster SABC. \u201cOnly solutions of land reform that are South African will work in South Africa.\u201d<\/p>\n

Trump has never experienced\u00a0apartheid<\/a>\u00a0and doesn\u2019t know its legacy of inequality in which the majority of South Africa\u2019s people own nothing, Zizi Kodwa, a member of the ruling party\u2019s national executive committee, told The Associated Press.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe is part of the right-wing lynch mob using the fear factor in order for us to maintain the status quo,\u201d Kodwa said. \u201cDonald Trump is a weapon of mass destruction.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The South African government lashed out at President Donald Trump on Thursday after he tweeted that his administration would be looking into farm seizures and the \u201clarge scale killing of farmers\u201d in South Africa. The government said\u00a0Trump\u2019s\u00a0tweet was based on \u201cfalse information\u201d and reflected a \u201cnarrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial… Read more »<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":90,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1923","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/90"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1923"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1942,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1923\/revisions\/1942"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1923"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1923"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/baileyonlineclassroom.com\/subsaharanafricablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1923"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}