South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa officially signed into law the new Expropriation Act on Jan. 23, replacing the apartheid-era Expropriation Act of 1975, after nearly five years of public consultation and parliamentary debate.

Although the racist system of apartheid ended officially in 1994, most private arable farmland in South Africa is still owned by white landholders, an inequity that the governing African National Congress has been working to overcome. The country had continued to operate under laws passed in 1913, like the Natives Land Act, which severely restricted Black South Africans from owning land and concentrated land ownership in the hands of the white minority. While Black South Africans comprise 80% of the population today, they only own 4% of their country’s land. (Reuters, Feb. 9)

An article by Ilayda Cakirtekin in FACTBOX on Feb 3, entitled “What is South Africa’s land law that triggered Trump’s threat?” explains that the law establishes the “legal framework for the government to expropriate private property for public purposes or in the public interest, setting rules for how compensation should be determined.” It “mandates fair compensation, but allows for certain cases in which no compensation will be paid, provided it is just and reasonable.”

Further, governmental authorities “will have the power to enforce the law to acquire land for a variety of purposes, including infrastructure development, public services and land reform. … However, the bill explicitly states that expropriation cannot occur arbitrarily or for reasons beyond serving the public good.” 

Deputy Public Works and Infrastructure Minister Sihle Zikalala said the legislation is a step toward rectifying past injustices without destabilizing the country’s economic development. He described the bill as “the culmination of a long history of struggle waged by the forebearers against the dispossession of the majority of Black people.” (FACTBOX)

Trump retaliates by cutting aid

Unsurprisingly, the racist-in-chief President Donald Trump reacted to the law’s passage by siding with the wealthy white landowners and freezing aid to South Africa — which helps with HIV/AIDS prevention. He claimed this legislation discriminates against “ethnic minority” white settlers, calling them “victims,” claiming that they received no compensation. (The Hill, Feb. 8) 

Trump’s view flies in the face of the reality of the brutal decades of apartheid, the land theft from the Black masses, the exploitation, brutalization, even murders of the country’s Indigenous people and the fascistic repression by the state until the liberation movement led by the African National Congress was victorious against white minority rule 30 years ago.

Trump continues to espouse the views of his first presidency when he intimated that South Africa’s land policies included “the large-scale killing of farmers,” a blatant lie. There were no such killings. Now, Trump accuses South Africa of “taking aggressive positions” against Israel and unjustly accusing the Zionist state of committing genocide in Gaza.

The reality known to the world’s people is that Israel has killed tens of thousands of Palestinians, wounded and imprisoned thousands more and destroyed most of Gaza’s infrastructure and buildings, leaving nearly 2 million people homeless.

This is the same Trump who — at a press conference with his buddy, Israel’s Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu — talked about Gaza’s “great real estate potential” and said its original inhabitants should be sent to the Sinai Desert so the land could be developed into a resort for the superrich. All Palestinians would be removed from Gaza; none could return.  This is “ethnic cleansing” and a war crime.. In Trump’s elitist, white supremacist world view, only the interests of the white, ultrarich matter. 

South Africa heroically took Israel to the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands, charging the Zionist state with genocide, supported by many other countries. For that, Israel’s pro-Zionist allies, including Trump, will never forgive its government or its courageous people who have steadfastly demonstrated solidarity with the Palestinians.

Kathy Durkin contributed to this article.