The President of the United States, Donald Trump, signed a freezer from Executive Order for South Africa on Friday, in which a recently adopted law on land ingredients that the American leader and his allies claim, discrimination against white farmers.
However, the auxiliary block is only the highlight of a series of pressure points between the USA and South Africa, which also built up during the administration of former President Joe Biden and now exploded under Trump.
We pursue the slides in bilateral relationships between the two nations and examine what endangers each of them if the relationships continue to spiral.
What did Trump say in the ban on South Africa Aid?
On February 2, Trump placed his truth on his social platform and said: “South Africa confiscates land and treats certain classes of people very badly.
“The United States will not stand for it, we will act,” he wrote. “In addition, I will cut all future funds to South Africa until a complete examination of the situation is complete!”
The Executive Ordinance, which Trump later signed on February 7, claimed that the expropriation law adopted in December enables “the government of South Africa the Agnican minority African agricultural property without compensation”.
“This law follows countless government policy that are intended to reduce the same opportunities in employment, education and economy as well as hater-filled rhetoric and government measures that have a disproportionate violence against racist unjustified landowners,” says the order.
The following day he doubled these comments while he spoke to reporters. “Terrible things happen in South Africa,” he said, referring to the land law.
In the Executive Ordinance, the United States also offered to settle Afrikaaner -Südafricans again, a proposal that was rejected by Africa groups, including those who have used the USA and Trump specifically against the South African government.
Have Trump also attacked South Africa?
From US Secretary of State Marco Rubio to Multibillionär and Trump consultant Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa, the Broadside against South Africa, have been relentless since the US President’s first comments.
A day after Trump’s initial comments when South African President Cyril Ramaphosa defended the land law on X, the richest man in the world replied: “Why do you have openly racist laws?”
On Wednesday, Rubio announced on X that he will not take part in the G20 summit in Johannesburg. South Africa does very bad things. Expropriate private ownership. “
South Africa, which organizes the rotating presidency of the G20 block of 20 large economies, will take place on February 20 to 21.
What is the truth about the land law?
As Al Jazeeras Qaanitah Hunter explained in this piece, the South African government insisted on the fact that there was no violent confiscation from the country and that any expropriation is “prescribed constitutionally”.
Experts have criticized the attempts to indicate that the South Africa’s law is similar to the violent confiscation of farmers in Zimbabw since the 2000s.
The South African law prohibits the arbitrary takeover of land and in most cases provides for compensation. In addition, the authorities must first try to achieve an appropriate agreement with the landowner, which only fails what the country can be expropriated.
Land can only be expropriated for public purposes – such as the construction of schools, hospitals or highways – or for public interests, including land reform. More than three decades after the end of the apartheid, the South African White Church, which is 7 percent of the population, controls more than 70 percent of the country in the country.
But white South African farmers have long been an obsession with Trump.
In 2018, during his first term, Trump claimed that South Africa had experienced “great murders” from white farmers. There is no evidence of the support of the claim, and South Africa said Trump was wrongly informed.
But while Trump’s attacks on South Africa correspond to the narrative of the White Victim, on which the political movement of the US President has long risen, the tensions between the nations in the four years in which bids were president has not disappeared.
In fact, they got up.
Has the position of South Africa influenced the US ties on Israel?
At the beginning of 2024, the then minister of South Africa, Naledi Pandor, flew to a crisis management trip to the USA.
The US Congress discussed a legislation to punish South Africa against Gaza because of its convinced criticism of Israel’s brutal war, which has now killed more than 61,000 people, including many missing people who are now suspected as dead.
South Africa brought Israel to the International Court of Justice in the Hague in December 2023 and accused of committing genocide in Gaza Strip. Since then, the ICJ has issued preliminary orders against Israel, while many countries have connected the case of South Africa.
The ICJ still has to make its final judgment, but some US congress members have decided that South Africa had to pay a prize.
The Bilateral Relations Review Act of the US southfrica, which was introduced almost exactly one year ago on February 6, 2024 in the US house, the Iranian regime ”.
In Washington, Pandor tried to meet Congress members and spoke to Think Tanks to articulate the roots of the opposition’s apartheid era against Israel policy against Palestine and the genocide war in Gaza.
This draft law still has to exist, but Trump referred to in his youngest comments, even in his youngest comments, the Israeli Israel policy of South Africa as the reason for Washington’s setback.
“South Africa has taken up aggressive positions compared to the United States and its allies, including the indictment of Israel, not Hamas, the genocide at the International Court of Justice and the recovery of its relationships with Iran to develop commercial, military and nuclear arrangements”, the executive Order said.
But what are the “aggressive actions” that South Africa has taken against the United States? Rubio also accused South Africa of “anti -Americanism”. What did he talk about?
The 2024 draft in the congress offers an insight into the deeper strategic tension, which has been shadowing ties for some time.
South Africa chooses Russia and China through the United States?
The draft law of 2024 accuses South Africa of pursuing “closer connections to the People’s Republic of China (‘PRC” and the Russian Federation “.
In May 2023, the US ambassador in South Africa accused the country of having delivered weapons against Ukraine through a cargo ship because of his war that secretly thought about a naval base near Cape Town.
In September 2023, an investigation by the South African government concluded that “no evidence” for claims was found that South Africa had delivered Russia weapons. Ramaphosa said that the claim had “an extremely harmful influence on our currency, our economy and our reputation in the world; In fact, our picture clouded it ”.
At the beginning of the year, in February 2023, South Africa, Russia and China organized joint military exercises in the Indian Ocean. The United States replied that it was “worried”.
And PRETORIA has taken care of compensating for relationships between Russia and China on the one hand and the USA and its allies on the other.
Despite the ICJ case, South Africa continues to have robust trade relationships with Israel: South Africa was the largest coal supplier for Israel for a few periods last year, even when the government of Ramaphosa was suspended inland hypocritical accusations for hypocrisy.
In the meantime, South Africa also convinced the Russian President Vladimir Putin not to take part in the BRICS summit, which he held last year. South Africa is a member of the International Criminal Court, which has issued an arrest warrant against Putin because of the war in Ukraine. Members of the ICC are expected to arrest persons with arrest warrants.
What is at risk if the relationships continue to fall?
As this Al Jazeera explanator from 2024 emerges, South Africa is the largest trading partner in the United States in Africa, with US exports worth 9.3 billion USD 2022 to South Africa. Around 600 US companies work in the country.
South Africa is also a critical strategic partner for the USA and a democratic bulwark in a region in which many other movements have turned towards authoritarianism after the liberation.
There is also a lot at stake for South Africa.
Although China is far from the largest trading partner of South Africa, the United States is the fourth largest source of its imports-after China, Germany and India and the second largest goal for his exports to China according to the observatory of economic complexity (OEC).
South Africa benefits from the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a US law adopted by Congress in 2000, which grants many nations south of the Sahara, including South Africa, duty-free access to US markets for 1,800 products. South African exports to the United States in 2022 were almost $ 11 billion, as OEC data show.
The threat of South Africa to lose this status as part of the AGOA now hovers over the relationship because Trump takes on trade relationships, of which he believes that they are unfair to the USA.
