By Zeke Miller
AP White House Correspondent
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Donald Trump signed an executive order Feb. 7 formalizing his announcement earlier this week that he’ll freeze assistance to South Africa for a law aiming to address some of the wrongs of South Africa’s racist apartheid era — a law the White House says amounts to discrimination against the country’s White minority.
“As long as South Africa continues to support bad actors on the world stage and allows violent attacks on innocent disfavored minority farmers, the United States will stop aid and assistance to the country,” the White House said in a summary of the order. The White House said Trump is also going to announce a program to resettle White South African farmers and their families as refugees.
Trump was responding to a new law in South Africa that gives the government powers in some instances to expropriate land from people. The White House said the law “blatantly discriminates against ethnic minority Afrikaners.”
Afrikaners are descended from mainly Dutch, but also French and German colonial settlers who first arrived in South Africa more than 300 years ago. They speak Afrikaans, a language derived from Dutch that developed in South Africa, and are distinct from other White South Africans who come from British or other backgrounds.
Together, Whites make up around 7 percent of South Africa’s population of 62 million.
The White House said South Africa’s government was doing “terrible things” and claimed land was being confiscated from “certain classes.” That’s not true, and even groups in South Africa who are challenging the law say no land has been confiscated. The South African government says private property rights are protected and Trump’s description of the law includes misinformation and “distortions.”
The Expropriation Act was signed into law by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa last month and allows the government to take land in specific instances where it is not being used, or where it would be in the public interest if it is redistributed.
It aims to address some of the wrongs of South Africa’s racist apartheid era, when Black people had land taken away from them and were forced to live in areas designated for non-Whites.
Elon Musk, a close Trump ally and head of Trump’s new Department of Government Efficiency, has highlighted that law in recent social media posts and cast it as a threat to South Africa’s White minority.
The order also references South Africa’s role in bringing accusations of genocide against Israel before the International Court of Justice.
The halt in foreign aid to South Africa comes amid a broader pause to most U.S. overseas assistance under Trump, as he looks to shift to what he calls an “America First” foreign policy.
Meanwhile, groups representing some of South Africa’s White minority responded Feb. 8 to a plan by President Donald Trump to offer them refugee status and resettlement in the United States by saying: thanks, but no thanks.
AP writer Gerald Imray contributed to this report.