Publications by Fellows: Alex Dyzenhaus: Trump Has Punished South Africa for Something Its Government Has Not Done

The US president has claimed the South African government is seizing land from white farmers. The reality is much more mundane, our Fellow Alex Dyzenhaus writes in a timely blog post for the LSE blog.

The post refutes claims, made by U.S. President Donald Trump, that South Africa’s new Expropriation Act enables race-based land seizures targeting white farmers, explaining that the legislation actually updates apartheid-era laws with constitutional protections and fair compensation processes. The piece also challenges Trump’s executive order that offered asylum to white South Africans based on claims of “disproportionate violence,” noting that rural crime in South Africa affects farmers of all races.

“Contrary to Trump’s claims, rural crime does not target White farmers more than it does Black farmers, and the state has no real means or desire to strip white farmers of their land. The response to the Expropriation Act is another sign of the worrying trend of the global far-right amplifying and exaggerating concerns across countries, with little context or understanding of the real-life situation in those countries,” Alex Dyzenhaus concludes.

Read the piece here.