Johannesburg, Feb 15 (EFE). – Several hundred white South Africans demonstrated outside the United States embassy in Pretoria on Saturday, claiming they were victims of racism by their government and expressed support for US President Donald Trump.
The protest comes after Trump said the South African government was “treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY,” referring to a land expropriation law South Africa passed in January to deal with the legacy of colonialism and apartheid.
On Saturday, protesters carried banners with messages such as “Thank you, Trump,” “Make Afrikaans great again,” and “No to land and property expropriation without compensation.”
Many of the protesters were from the Afrikaner community (white South Africans descended from Dutch settlers), opposed to what they consider racist laws imposed by the South African government to discriminate against the white minority.
“At this demonstration, we handed over a memorandum to the United States Embassy in which we compiled all the evidence of farm murders against South Africans, as well as all racial laws against white South Africans,” said Willem Petzer, who gave a speech at the protest.
Petzer, who describes himself as an “Afrikaner commentator” on social media, said that 138,000 people signed said memorandum.
Saturday’s rally comes two weeks after Trump cut funding to South Africa over the government’s land expropriation policies and offered to resettle white farmers whose land he says is being expropriated without compensation in the US.
A week ago, Afriforum, an NGO focused on Afrikaner interests and described by critics as a far-right organization, welcomed Trump’s pressure on the government but rejected the blocking of aid and its discarded moving their community to the US.
The US president has repeatedly accused Pretoria of confiscating land without compensation and violating human rights, following the approval of a law on Jan. 23, which will make it easier to expropriate land in the public interest.
Also, Trump signed an executive order on Jan. 7 indefinitely blocking aid to South Africa, accusing it of harming Israel with the genocide case at the International Court of Justice.
The South African government rejected Trump’s executive order, denouncing “what appears to be a campaign of misinformation and propaganda.”
It added that “the basic premise of (Trump’s) order lacks factual accuracy and fails to acknowledge South Africa’s deep and painful history of colonialism and apartheid,” the system of racial segregation that ruled South Africa between 1948 and 1994.
Although Trump suspended global humanitarian aid for 90 days, the sanction against South Africa – except for aid to combat HIV – is indefinite. EFE
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