Key topics
- Trump’s statements on South Africa fuel division and hatred, says AgriSA.
- Afrikaner rights groups misinformed Trump about land expropriation, Kotzé claims.
- South African farm sector’s success threatened by U.S. aid cuts and rhetoric.
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By Antony Sguazzin ___STEADY_PAYWALL___
US President Donald Trump’s pronouncements on South Africa are fueling hatred and jeopardizing an economic success story, the nation’s biggest farm group said.
Trump, who cut off aid to South Africa after making false claims about a land-expropriation law and persecution of Afrikaners, an ethnic group descended mainly from Dutch and French settlers, has divided the farm community, said Johann Kotzé, chief executive officer of AgriSA and an Afrikaner himself.
AfriForum, a conservative White Afrikaans rights group, has been accused of misinforming Trump with years of campaigning over land grabs that never took place and alleged persecution of White people. Right-wing farmer groups and separatist organizations have praised Trump’s comments.
“I disagree to what they stated out here. I didn’t experience that as organized agriculture in South Africa,” Kotzé said in an interview on Tuesday. “The radicalism that took place after Donald Trump’s statement, that fuels hatred.”
Trump, in a Feb. 7 order and other statements, accused the South African government of treating “certain classes of people VERY BADLY” and said he planned to offer Afrikaners refugee status. South Africa-born Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and one of his top allies, has amplified the claims.
The Expropriation Act “follows countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners,” the nation’s mission in South Africa said in a Feb. 10 statement.
“It’s quite bizarre,” Kotzé said of the refugee offer. Given “the way we farm and the success we have with exports and the life we have, why would you leave that to be in a country where you don’t have any citizenship,” he said.
Since the end of apartheid in 1994, when a Whites-only government dominated by Afrikaners ceded power to the Black majority, agricultural output has doubled in South Africa and farm exports have risen more than sixfold. The sector provides 935,000 jobs.
“Its a massive win for South Africa,” Kotzé said. “We don’t need some negativity now.”
He expressed concern that Trump might cut off South Africa’s duty-free access to the US market for some goods including farm products such as wine and citrus fruit. AgriSA, many of whose members are Afrikaners, represents 1,000 farmer associations across the nine provinces and also has consumers of farm products as members.
Following Trump’s actions, Orania — a small Afrikaner-only settlement — demanded greater self-determination. AfriForum, while saying Trump’s actions aren’t in the interests of the country, said the South African government is to blame for aid being cut off by the US. The Transvaal Agricultural Union, which advocates Christian values and private property rights, thanked Trump for his intervention.
Kotzé also dismissed claims, that have been fueled in the past by Musk in posts on X, that Afrikaans farmers are being murdered for political reasons.
“Crime in South Africa is too high,” he said. “If a murder is on a farm, we call it a farm murder. But remember that same night somebody was also murdered in the little township where the farmworkers came from.” Most agricultural laborers in South Africa are Black.
Still, Kotzé said, AgriSA has concerns about the expropriation act signed into law by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in December, such as when land can be taken without compensation and may take legal action to have it clarified.
But, he added, “no farms were taken without compensation — none. Land grabs did not take place.”
Read also:
- RW Johnson: Rational, fact-based perspective of Trump, Musk, Ramaphosa pronouncements
- Afriforum – ANC, not us, brought Trump’s wrath onto SA. For once, Cyril, accept responsibility
- ‘Yes Please’ – 17,000 Saffers want Trump’s olive branch; urge Ramaphosa to talk – Neil Diamond SACCUSA
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