Propaganda By a Nationalist Group Stokes Fear About South Africa’s New Land Bill

Misinformation drives the frenzy caused by a new bill that allows the South African government to take over land without compensation.The bill, signed into law by President Cyril Ramaphosa in January, is meant to kick in when "it is 'just and equitable and in the public interest' to do so.

In a press briefing following his initial post on the Truth social media platform, Trumpsaid the South African government is "taking away land and confiscating land" from citizens arbitrarily, terming it a human rights violation. However, the new expropriation law only applies to situations where lands are not being used, when there's no intention to develop or make money from it, or when it poses a risk to people.

"The South African government is not going to start confiscating land from property owners," Zintle Magazi, a Masters candidate at the Wits School of Governance, tells OkayAfrica. "What it aims to do instead is to have the power to expropriate land that is not being used, or that is not being utilized well as a means of driving the land reform project, which, again, is still quite limited within the framework of this act."

Land reform conversations have been a decades-long affair in South Africa, as the white minority population owns the majority of the private land. A 2017 government report stated that72 percent of farmland was white-owned, a direct consequence of apartheid, which restricted the rights of Black people to own property. This led to the massive forced removal of Black people and families from their lands in the 20th century, and even now, many people are still speaking out against that horrific history.

Magazi says that the new Expropriation Act doesn't "go at the heart of land distribution inequality in South Africa," meaning that white landowners are safe, regardless of how they acquired their property, as long as it is used and poses no risks.

"What has caused a lot of conversation in South Africa is this civil group called AfriForum," Magazi explains, "which is known in South Africa to be a right-wing, white nationalist organization, and they're taking a very opportunistic moment to dog whistle to the resurgence of ultra-right nationalism that is happening globally, particularly in the United States."

In response to Trump's Truth post, AfriForum CEO Kallie Kriel said his organization is requesting "an amendment bill to the Expropriation Act to remove the threat to property rights" and also urged the U.S. president and Musk to target any sanctions to leaders of the African National Congress (ANC), which is the majority party in South Africa's Government of National Unity (GNU).

Musk has accused Ramaphosa's government of having "openly racist ownership laws," and he also reposted a post by X user @MarioNawfal that the new expropriation law is"stripping white farmers of their land."

"We know that there is a global sentiment, especially under leaders like President Trump, that white minorities are coming under threat, and AfriForum is signaling that exact thing," Magazi says. "The reality, however, is that this is far from the truth."

AfriForum and its like-minded individuals have also referenced Zimbabwe's disastrous land reform policy under former President Robert Mugabe in the early 2000s, where land was forcibly taken away from white owners and given to Black people. The aggressive policy backfired and isfundamental to Zimbabwe'sdecades-long economic malaise.

However, South Africa's new expropriation law is far from this, and even though Kriel seems to notice more clarity, he insists that Afriforum's stance is still valid. "I won't say wholesale that it was false," Krieltold Daily Maverick earlier today when asked about Trump's earlier statements. He cites thecontroversial education bill (BELA) that gives provincial education departments the right to determine language in schools as an example of South Africa "mistreating certain classes of people," as stated in Trump's post.

Despite admitting that "there is no large-scale confiscation by the government," Kriel said AfriForum is worried by land grabs. And while his statements are currently unsubstantiated, similar toformer, debunked claims that white farmers were being killed in high numbers for politically-motivated reasons, AfriForum's affiliations with Trump and Musk could worsen the already precarious situation of U.S. aid funding to South Africa.

"It's quite cynical that the withdrawal of aid would affect the most vulnerable people, and [there's] a group that is totally unrelated to this conversation [worsening things]," Magazi says. "This is quite a teachable moment for us as a country to see how false narratives can be weaponized and how this can affect the country's pursuit of implementing domestic policies to try and address reform that is much needed."