By Lehlohonolo Lehana.
The United States (US) has announced new visa restrictions against the South African officials, citing “discrimination against the white minority in the country.”
The Expropriation Act was signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa last year as part of the government’s efforts to address the effects of land dispossession and economic inequality through decades of white minority rule in South Africa that ended in 1994.
Donald Trump has said the law is used to target white farmers for land seizures and has cited it as a reason why the U.S. has withdrawn all financial aid to South Africa and imposed high trade tariffs on the country.
South Africa has denied the assertion saying the law is necessary to remedy the legacy of apartheid.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced the policy in a statement on Tuesday, saying it was being imposed under Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.
“The United States remains gravely concerned about racially motivated crime and government-sponsored discrimination occurring against the Afrikaners and other minority populations in South Africa, including race-based discriminatory legislation, threats of land expropriation without compensation, and incitement of racial violence through dehumanizing chants and slogans,” Rubio said in a statement.
By late June of this year, the US has admitted more than 7,700 Afrikaners while largely shuttering the country’s refugee program for the rest of the world.
“The South African government has not adequately addressed the previously laid out concerns and so today, I am announcing a new visa restriction policy … targeting foreign nationals who are responsible for, or complicit in, the enactment or implementation of laws or policies that enable uncompensated land seizures, race-based discrimination, and/or the incitement of imminent violence against members of minority ethnic or racial groups in South Africa,” Rubio added.
The United States will not allow such behavior to go unchecked. These actions directly undermine peace, economic stability, and the rule of law, and they are incompatible with the pillars of America’s foreign policy,” Rubio said, adding that they “once again strongly urge the South African government to quickly address these egregious actions.”
Gareth Newham, who heads a justice and violence prevention program at the Institute for Security Studies said, “If there was any evidence of either a genocide or targeted violence taking place against any group based on their ethnicity this, we would be amongst the first to raise (the) alarm and provide the evidence to the world.”
There are about 2.7 million white Afrikaners, who are descendants of Dutch and French settlers, in South Africa. About 80% of the people living in South Africa are Black. From 1948 until the early 1990s, South Africa lived under apartheid rule, racial segregation that gave only white people power and forced Black South Africans to live separately from white people.
Meanwhile the Democratic Alliance (DA), which is now part of the Government of National Unity (GNU), has joined with lobby groups to challenge the law in the Western Cape High Court. Judgement has been reserved.