This put up was initially printed on The Washington Informer
By Stacy M. Brown
President Donald Trump has issued an government order to chop U.S. help to South Africa, whereas extending refugee standing to white South Africans, a maneuver some are calling a calculated train in race-baiting and historic revisionism.
Trump claims that Afrikaners, the white descendants of Dutch and French settlers who personal the overwhelming majority of South Africa’s farmland, are victims of persecution underneath President Cyril Ramaphosa’s land reform efforts. But, the truth of land possession in South Africa tells a distinct story, and Trump’s feigned concern for land rights is made much more absurd when in comparison with the systematic land dispossession endured by Black People in the US.
South Africa’s land reform efforts intention to redress the racial inequities created by apartheid, a regime that systematically transferred land from the Black majority to the white minority.
Regardless of the official finish of apartheid three a long time in the past, white South Africans nonetheless management between 70% to 80% of the nation’s arable land. Ramaphosa’s African Nationwide Congress (ANC) authorities has launched expropriation insurance policies to right this historic injustice, making certain that land reform is within the public curiosity and throughout the constitutional framework.
But, Trump has chosen to distort the difficulty, parroting the narrative pushed by AfriForum, an Afrikaner foyer group that claims white South Africans face racial discrimination.
Even AfriForum, nonetheless, doesn’t settle for Trump’s provide of refugee standing.
“Emigration solely presents a chance for Afrikaners who’re prepared to threat probably sacrificing their descendants’ cultural id as Afrikaners. The worth for that is just too excessive,” stated AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel.
Land Rights and Systemic Theft of Black Land within the U.S.
Trump’s sudden curiosity in land rights, juxtaposed towards the backdrop of America’s personal historical past of racialized land theft, paints an fascinating image. Whereas Trump amplifies the supposed plight of white South Africans, his personal nation has an extended and well-documented historical past of dispossessing Black People of their land by authorized and extralegal means.
In accordance with Inequality.org, at first of the twentieth century, Black People owned not less than 14 million acres of land. By the twenty first century, 90% of that land had been taken by fraudulent authorized schemes, intimidation, and outright theft. At present, African People personal only one.1 million acres of farmland and part-own one other 1.07 million acres, a staggering lack of generational wealth that has by no means been addressed.
Land theft from Black folks in the US was carried out by strategies corresponding to heirs’ property legal guidelines, tax gross sales, and the Torrens Act, which allowed white builders to grab Black-owned land underneath the guise of authorized loopholes.
Heirs’ property legal guidelines divided land amongst a number of descendants, making it troublesome for households to retain possession. Tax gross sales preyed on Black households with fastened incomes, forcing them to public sale off land they’d no intention of promoting.
The Torrens Act allowed land to be bought with out notifying all co-owners, stripping Black households of their property with out authorized recourse.
The impression of this systematic theft is immeasurable.
In Mississippi alone, between 1950 and 1964, almost 800,000 acres of Black-owned land had been stolen, amounting to a present-day valuation of as much as $6.6 billion.
The wealth misplaced by land dispossession stays one of the crucial enduring elements within the racial wealth hole, the place the standard white household nonetheless has eight instances the wealth of the standard Black household.
Trump’s selective outrage over land redistribution in South Africa stands in direct distinction to his administration’s full disregard for the historic theft of Black land within the U.S. His insurance policies persistently benefited white landowners whereas neglecting the Black farmers and households who had been systematically robbed of their property for generations.
The administration dismantled the civil rights division of the USDA, an company lengthy accused of discriminating towards Black farmers and ignored efforts to supply restitution to those that had suffered underneath racist insurance policies.
Trump and Immigration, Overseas Relations
The irony of the president’s willingness to increase refugee standing to white South Africans deepens when one considers Trump’s well-documented hostility towards refugees.
His administration slashed refugee admissions to report lows, imposed immigration bans, and separated kids from their households on the border. However now, white South Africans—who stay essentially the most economically privileged demographic of their nation—are all of the sudden deemed worthy of asylum.
Black and brown refugees fleeing conflict, famine, and persecution had been demonized as threats underneath Trump’s watch, but white Afrikaners are welcomed with open arms.
Ziyad Motala, writing within the Center East Monitor, famous that Trump’s declare of white South African persecution “could be an amusing episode of alternate historical past if it weren’t so transparently false.”
White South Africans proceed to dominate the nation’s economic system, with the highest earners and company executives overwhelmingly white.
Motala additional identified that Trump’s narrative is being bolstered by figures like Elon Musk, whose household straight benefited from apartheid’s racially engineered financial system. Musk’s political pivot towards white grievance politics aligns seamlessly with Trump’s newest efforts to fabricate a racial disaster the place none exists.
Furthermore, South Africa’s judiciary, sure by constitutional supremacy, has demonstrated a steadfast dedication to legality and justice, one thing that Trump’s presidency persistently undermined. Not like Trump, South Africa’s Constitutional Court docket has held former leaders accountable who overtly flouted the rule of regulation and sought unchecked energy.
When former South African President Jacob Zuma ignored courtroom orders, he was held in contempt and sentenced to jail. Against this, Trump’s abuse of presidential pardons noticed convicted conflict criminals and insurrectionists absolved merely for his or her loyalty.
Some specialists aware of the topic be aware that Trump’s actual motivation in concentrating on South Africa possible has little to do with land reform and every part to do with the nation’s stance on worldwide justice. South Africa’s determination to convey Israel earlier than the Worldwide Court docket of Justice over its actions in Gaza has drawn Washington’s ire, and a few say the president has now concocted a race-based distraction to defend Israel.
Trump, who has criminalized Black and brown asylum seekers, now fashions himself a humanitarian for white South Africans.
“For all of the speak of ‘America First,’ Trump’s insurance policies have by no means been about nationwide curiosity however slightly concerning the consolidation of energy by fearmongering and race-baiting,” Motala noticed. “South Africa, in its dedication to authorized accountability, human rights, and constitutional integrity, exposes exactly what Trump and his enablers despise: a authorized order the place energy is constrained, the rule of regulation prevails, and privilege will not be an everlasting birthright.”
The put up Some Consultants Say Trump’s South African Land Stance Exposes a Deep Hypocrisy appeared first on The Washington Informer.
