The US president, Donald Trump, has signed an executive order to cut financial assistance to South Africa, accusing the country’s government of “unjust racial discrimination” against white Afrikaners and offering them asylum in the US.
Conservative Afrikaner pressure groups said they were concerned about US aid to South Africa being cut and that South Africa would be excluded from the African Growth and Opportunity Act.
Elon Musk, the South African-born billionaire leading Trump’s efforts to slash the size of US government, including foreign aid spending, has criticised South Africa on his social media platform, X, for what he claimed were “openly racist policies”.
“It is ironic that the executive order makes provision for refugee status in the US for a group in South Africa that remains among 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,” it said.
Trump cuts aid to South Africa over ‘racial discrimination’ against Afrikaners US president also offers asylum to Afrikaners and criticises law that allows land seizures without compensation in some circumstances.
