Trump offers pathway to citizenship for South African farmers, families

(The Hill) -- President Donald Trump is offering an expedited pathway to U.S. citizenship to some South African farmers, calling their treatment in the country "terrible."

"They are confiscating their LAND and FARMS, and MUCH WORSE THAN THAT," he wrote in a Friday morning post on Truth Social.

Trump signed an executive order last month halting federal aid to South Africa over property laws that he said impose "unjust racial discrimination" against white Afrikaner farmers.

"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," he wrote Friday. "This process will begin immediately!"

He didn't provide additional details about the immediate plan, but Trump wrote in his February order that the U.S. would "promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation" and directed his Secretaries of State and Homeland Security to prioritize their resettlement through the United States Refugee Admissions Program."

Afrikaners are a white predominantly Dutch ethnic group that makes up less than 7 percent of South Africa's total population.

The South African government has rejected claims of racial discrimination and accused Trump of having a distorted take on its land law that went into effect in January. The majority Black country's Parliament passed the law "to redress the results of past racial discriminatory laws or practices," including apartheid and European colonialism. It's currently being challenged in court, and no land has been taken.

Tech billionaire Elon Musk, a top adviser to Trump, hales from South Africa. Musk, who is white, has lambasted the land law on social media and claimed on the social platform X on Friday that his company Starklink can't operate in his home country "because I’m not black."

South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, who has spoken with Musk amid the dispute, alluded to Trump’s attack on the law during a speech to Parliament last month.

“We will not be bullied,” he said. “We will stand together as a united nation and we will speak with one voice in defense of our national interests, our sovereignty and our constitutional democracy.”