Some white South Africans showed support for President Donald Trump on Saturday and gathered at the US Embassy in Pretoria to claim they are victims of racism by their own government.
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Hundreds of protesters held placards that read “Thank God for President Trump” and displayed other messages criticising what they see as racist laws instituted by the South African government that discriminate against the white minority.
Many were from the Afrikaner community that Trump focused on in an executive order a week ago that cut aid to the Black-led South African government. In the order, Trump said South Africa’s Afrikaners, who are descendants of mainly Dutch colonial settlers, were being targeted by a new law that allows the government to expropriate private land.
The South African government has denied its new law is tied to race and says Trump’s claims over the country and the law have been full of misinformation and distortions.
Trump said land was being expropriated from Afrikaners – which the order referred to as “racially disfavoured landowners” – when no land has been taken under the law. Trump also announced a plan to offer Afrikaners refugee status in the US. They are only one part of South Africa’s white minority.
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In a speech to Parliament this week, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said the forced removal of any people from their land will never be allowed in South Africa again after millions of Blacks were dispossessed of property under the apartheid system of white minority rule and hundreds of years of colonialism before that.