United States President Donald Trump has asked his Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to closely study South Africa’s shifting land policy.
In a late night Tweet on Wednesday, Trump asked Pompeo to pay close attention to land and farm seizures in addition to expropriations and large scale killing of farmers.
I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. “South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.” @TuckerCarlson @FoxNews
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2018
Trump tweeted at the conclusion of a programme on conservative cable channel Fox News.
The programme had a six minute segment in which they erroneously claimed that President Cyril Ramaphosa had begun seizing land from his country’s own citizens without compensating them for it because they are the wrong skin colour.
Trump is responding to this clip from Tucker Carlson, which directly calls out “Mike Pompeo’s State Department” for not criticizing South Africa’s land reform policies pic.twitter.com/W97V3qoZWq
— John Hudson (@John_Hudson) August 23, 2018
The host Tucker Carlson asked why the American elite are not paying attention to the situation in South Africa at all.
He then quoted a statement from the State Department, arguing that South Africa was in fact a strong democracy grappling in an open and public manner with the difficult issue of land reform, citing the government’s own assurances that the process would unfold within the rule of law.
An interview with Marion Tupy of the conservative Cato Institute then drew comparisons to the land seizures in Zimbabwe arguing that “in a free and civilized society, we don’t take people’s stuff”.
