Trump actions fuel hatred, says South Africa’s biggest farm lobby

CAPE TOWN – US President Donald Trump’s pronouncements on South Africa are fuelling hatred and jeopardising an economic success story, the nation’s biggest farm group said. 

Mr Trump,

who cut off aid to South Africa

after making false claims about a land-expropriation law and persecution of Afrikaners – an ethnic group descended mainly from Dutch and French settlers – has divided the farm community, said Johann Kotze, chief executive of AgriSA and an Afrikaner himself. 

AfriForum, a conservative white Afrikaans rights group, has been accused of misinforming Mr Trump with years of campaigning over land grabs that never took place and alleged persecution of white people. Right-wing farmer groups and separatist organisations have praised Mr Trump’s comments. 

“I disagree to what they stated out here. I didn’t experience that as organised agriculture in South Africa,” Mr Kotze said in an interview on Feb 11. “The radicalism that took place after Donald Trump’s statement, that fuels hatred.” 

Mr Trump, in an order on Feb 7 and other statements, accused the South African government of treating “certain classes of people very badly” and said he planned to offer Afrikaners refugee status.

South Africa-born Elon Musk, the world’s richest man and one of his top allies, has amplified the claims.

“It’s quite bizarre,” Mr Kotze said of the refugee offer. Given “the way we farm and the success we have with exports and the life we have, why would you leave that to be in a country where you don’t have any citizenship”, he said.

Since the end of apartheid in 1994, when a whites-only government dominated by Afrikaners ceded power to the black majority, agricultural output has doubled in South Africa and farm exports have risen more than sixfold. The sector provides 935,000 jobs.

“It’s a massive win for South Africa,” Mr Kotze said. “We don’t need some negativity now.”

He expressed concern that Mr Trump might cut off South Africa’s duty-free access to the US market for some goods, including farm products such as wine and citrus fruit.

AgriSA, many of whose members are Afrikaners, represents 1,000 farmer associations across the nine provinces and also has consumers of farm products as members. 

Following Mr Trump’s actions, Orania – a small Afrikaner-only settlement – demanded greater self-determination.

AfriForum, while saying Mr Trump’s actions were not in the interests of the country, added that the South African government is to blame for aid being cut off by the US.

The Transvaal Agricultural Union, which advocates Christian values and private property rights, thanked Mr Trump for his intervention. 

Mr Kotze also dismissed claims, which have been fuelled in the past by Mr Musk in posts on his social media platform X, that Afrikaans farmers are being murdered for political reasons.

“Crime in South Africa is too high,” he said.  “If a murder is on a farm, we call it a farm murder. But remember that same night, somebody was also murdered in the little township where the farm workers came from.” Most agricultural labourers in South Africa are black.

Still, Mr Kotze said, AgriSA has concerns about the Expropriation Act signed in December 2024 into law by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, including when land can be taken without compensation, and may take legal action to have it clarified. 

But, Mr Kotze added, “no farms were taken without compensation – none. Land grabs did not take place”. BLOOMBERG