President Donald Trump is offering white South African farmers and their families a “rapid pathway to Citizenship,” citing their “terrible” treatment by their government.
The move will please his “first buddy” Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa in 1971 and has long railed against the government of Cyril Ramaphosa’s African National Congress party and its treatment of white farmers.
Trump announced Friday that he is stopping federal funding to South Africa over its treatment of the farmers. In a Truth Social post, the president repeated a claim that Ramaphosa is confiscating land from farmers and “WORSE THAN THAT.”
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“South Africa is being terrible, plus, to long time Farmers in the country. They are confiscating their LAND and FARMS, and MUCH WORSE THAN THAT,” he wrote.
“A bad place to be right now, and we are stopping all Federal Funding. To go a step further, any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship. This process will begin immediately!”
The U.S. provided South Africa with over $318 million in aid in the fiscal year ending in 2024, including a $260 chunk that went towards health initiatives, according to the government’s foreign assistance site.
“You’re welcome,” Musk wrote on X not long after the news broke. He was responding to a post from conservative account Visegrad24 concerning the so-called “truth about the racism, violence and gross mismanagement of South Africa.”
The account also thanked the tech mogul for giving “voiceless people a platform.”
“Thankfully, this administration cares about all people,” Musk added.
Meanwhile, Secretary of Agriculture Brooke Rollins reacted to the news by saying: “This is the sort of immigrant we want.”
In her post she railed against the South African government, and said: “The strong tradition of South African agriculture, ranching, and conservation goes back centuries, and reflects above all else the Afrikaner devotion to land and heritage. Pioneers in the best tradition, they made gardens of the wilderness and transformed their country into the breadbasket of a continent.”
She continued: “Our President’s vision is the right one: this is the sort of immigrant we want, and if the South African regime now—kleptocratic, anarchic, and increasingly incompetent—does not want this historic class of entrepreneurs, then America does.”
But even MAGA loyalist Laura Loomer wasn’t sold on the news, fearing it might mean more immigrants arrive in the U.S.
“Trump is offering White South African farmers a pathway to citizenship to flee White Genocide in South Africa,” she wrote.
“Let’s hope we can increase the number of mass deportations first. Immigration won’t get better if more people come in while deportation numbers remain extremely low.”
Trump and Musk started to target the South African Expropriation Act with more haste in early February.
The act, signed in January, gives the government powers to take land from private parties, if in the public interest. Musk has described it as “racist.”
The billionaire has also said that the law would “enable the government of South Africa to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners' agricultural property without compensation.”
However, race is not mentioned in the law and the government insists property laws are protected. Even still, minority white Afrikaners fear they will be targeted. After Trump threatened to pull aid to South Africa over the law last month, Ramaphosa called Musk, the former’s spokesperson said.
Vincent Magwenya said that the content of the call was “logical.”
The contentious law’s aim, according to Reuters, is to “transfer 30 percent of farmland owned by white farmers to black farmers by 2030.”
White people comprise around seven percent of the country’s population of 62 million, but own approximately 70 percent of the private farming land.
The issue of land ownership in South Africa is politically charged, and both Trump and Musk have consistently failed to caveat their opinions with the fact that white ownership of farmland in the country has its roots in the racist apartheid system, and colonialism before that.
The ruling ANC Party, which has dominated politics in the country since the end of apartheid in 1994, sees the law as a chance to right historic wrongs.
