President Donald Trump signed an executive order Friday formalizing his announcement earlier this week that he’ll freeze assistance to South Africa because of its 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.”
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 were redistributed.
It aims to address some of the wrongs of South Africa’s racist apartheid era, when land was taken away from Black people and they were forced to live in areas designated for nonwhites.
Elon Musk, who is 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. Musk was born in South Africa.
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 in most U.S. overseas assistance under Trump, as he looks to shift to what he calls an “America First” foreign policy.