JOHANNESBURG

South Africa on Saturday expressed concern over US “propaganda” and "misinformation" after US President Donald Trump froze Washington's aid to the country, citing the recently adopted land appropriation law and Pretoria’s genocide case against Israel.

“We are concerned by what seems to be a campaign of misinformation and propaganda aimed at misrepresenting our great nation. It is disappointing to observe that such narratives seem to have found favor among decision-makers in the United States of America,” South Africa’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The reaction came after Trump said the US “cannot support the government of South Africa’s commission of rights violations in its country or its undermining United States foreign policy, which poses national security threats to our Nation, our allies, our African partners, and our interests.”

Trump also cited South Africa’s genocide case against Israel at the International Court of Justice (ICJ), and Pretoria’s closer ties with Iran as reasons for cutting aid.

Pretoria has said it only received US aid for the prevention of HIV/AIDS in the country.

The Trump order also includes a provision for assisting Afrikaners, an ethnic group in South Africa made up of descendants of Dutch settlers, to resettle in the US as refugees escaping alleged government-sponsored race-based discrimination.

“It is ironic that the executive order (of Trump) makes provision for refugee status in the US for a group in South Africa that remains amongst the most economically privileged, while vulnerable people in the US from other parts of the world are being deported and denied asylum despite real hardship,” the ministry added.

Since Trump took office last month, Washington has flown out hundreds of undocumented migrants from the country while strengthening border areas to disallow anyone to enter the US illegally.

South Africa reiterated that it remains committed to finding diplomatic solutions to any misunderstandings or disputes but expressed concern over the foundational premise of the US order, saying it “lacks factual accuracy and fails to recognize South Africa’s profound and painful history of colonialism and apartheid.”

The new expropriation law aims to address past injustices of apartheid and allows for the expropriation of land without compensation in conditions where it is "just and equitable and in the public interest."

Land is a sensitive issue in South Africa, where the majority of natural resources are concentrated in the hands of a few white people. During the apartheid era, Black people and non-whites were forcefully ousted from their land by racist policies.

Even after the fall of apartheid, to this day, most commercial farms in the country are also owned by white people.

Most commercial farms in the country that produce the bulk of food are owned by whites especially the Afrikaner descendants of Dutch settlers.

President Cyril Ramaphosa hopes the land expropriation legislation will help alleviate huge disparities in land ownership stemming from colonial settlement and the subsequent institution of racial segregation and white-minority rule.

Notably, South Africa was the first country to take Israel to the ICJ over its genocidal war on Gaza, which stopped last month due to an ongoing ceasefire between Tel Aviv and the Palestinian resistance group Hamas.

More than 46,000 people have been killed in Gaza due to Israeli bombardment since Oct. 7, 2023.