South Africa lashes Trump over land ‘seizures’ tweet

JOHANNESBURG: South Africa accused US President Donald Trump of fuelling racial tensions on Thursday after he said farmers were being forced off their land and many of them killed.

Trump’s tweet touched on the overwhelmingly white ownership of farmland in South Africa – one of the most sensitive issues in the country’s post-apartheid history.

“South Africa totally rejects this narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past,” said the government on an official Twitter account.

The foreign ministry said in a statement it had met US embassy officials and warned them over the “alarmist, false, inaccurate and misinformed, as well as – in some cases – politically-motivated statements,” on the issue.

Foreign Minister Lindiwe Sisulu will also speak directly with her American opposite number, Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, it said earlier.

Trump wrote overnight: “I have asked Secretary of State... Pompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers.”

His tweet apparently followed a segment on conservative Fox News about Pretoria’s plan to change the constitution to speed up expropriation of land without compensation to redress racial imbalances in land ownership. — AFP