JOHANNESBURG--South African President Cyril Ramaphosa defended his land reform policy on Monday against an attack by Donald Trump that laid bare deep divisions within South Africa over racial disparities in ownership, an issue festering since apartheid.
The U.S. president said on Sunday, without citing evidence, that "South Africa is confiscating land" and "certain classes of people" were being treated "very badly", adding that he would cut off funding to the country in response.
Ramaphosa said the government had not confiscated any land and he looked forward to engaging with Trump to foster a better understanding over a policy he said ensures equitable public access to land.
Trump's attack was echoed by his South African-born billionaire backer Elon Musk, who said in a post on X the country had "openly racist ownership laws", suggesting white people were the victims.White landowners possess three quarters of South Africa's freehold farmland, compared with 4% for Black landowners. Black people make up about 80% of South Africa's total population, while about 8% are white.
Ramaphosa signed into law a bill last month aimed at addressing the disparity by making it easier for the state to expropriate land in the public interest. His African National Congress, the biggest party in the ruling coalition, accused Trump of amplifying misinformation propagated by AfriForum, a right-wing lobby group that promotes what it sees as the interests of white Afrikaans speakers.
The ANC said Trump's attack was "a direct result of the lobby group's ongoing efforts to mislead the global community and protect apartheid-era land ownership."
AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel said his group would ask the U.S. government "to directly punish senior ANC leaders and not the people of South Africa" over land reform. A spokesperson confirmed the group had lobbied in the United States.
The mostly white-led Democratic Alliance, the second-biggest party in the coalition government, said it wanted the land reform law to be amended to address certain flaws, but nevertheless corrected Trump on the specifics."It is not true that the Act allows land to be seized by the state arbitrarily, and it does require fair compensation for legitimate expropriations," the DA said.
The mining minister, Gwede Mantashe of the ANC, said African countries should "withhold minerals" from the United States in response to any aid cut. Ramaphosa's spokesperson Vincent Magwenya told Reuters those words should be "taken in jest" and the government was not seriously advocating such a policy.
