South Africa hits out at Trump over racially divisive tweet

JOHANNESBURG:THE South African government lashed out at President Donald Trump on Thursday after he tweeted that his administration would be looking into farm seizures and the “large scale killing of farmers” in South Africa.

The government said Trump’s tweet was based on “false information” and reflected a “narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past.” It said it was meeting with the US embassy on Thursday as it seeks to clarify Trump’s remarks.

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 percent of the population, still own just 4 percent 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 color,” calling the alleged seizures “immoral.”