Article content continued

South Africa is in the throes of a racially charged national debate over land reform, a lawful process that seeks to correct the legacy of decades of white minority rule that stripped blacks of their land.

Today, nearly a quarter-century after the first democratic elections, black South Africans, who comprise 80 per cent of the population, still own just 4 per cent of the country’s land, according to the government.

Though the ruling African National Congress, which has been in power since 1994, has pledged to close that gap, progress has been slow. In July, President Cyril Ramaphosa said his party would amend the constitution so the state could expropriate land without compensation to speed up the land reform process.

Trump’s tweet followed a segment on Fox News on Wednesday in which host Tucker Carlson claimed Ramaphosa had already started “seizing land from his own citizens without compensation because they are the wrong skin colour,” calling the alleged seizures “immoral.”

Though South Africa’s constitution has not yet been amended and the government has not seized any major agricultural land, the prospect has sent panic through some white farming communities who worry the policy will strip them of their land, cause land prices to plummet or make them the target of potentially violent land seizures.

For years, a small but vocal group of white South Africans have claimed white farmers are the target of violent, racially motivated farm attacks.