The US Human Rights Report Is Called Biased by South Africa Amid Increasing Diplomatic Strife
Pretoria disagrees with US claims of Afrikaner discrimination and says the study is flawed and politically motivated at a time when tensions are rising.
A new report from the US State Department draws a bleak picture of South Africa’s human rights situation. The government strongly disagrees with the report and has labeled it “inaccurate and deeply flawed.” As part of its global human rights review, the Trump administration released a study that says South Africa’s rights record fell sharply in 2024. The report focuses on how white Afrikaners were treated after broad land reform laws were passed.
Washington said the changes unfairly target Afrikaners, who were historically a privileged group under apartheid. This led to claims of discrimination against them. South Africa’s Foreign Ministry, on the other hand, said the story was false and based on “out-of-context information and discredited accounts.”
The ministry said, “The Land Expropriation Act is a constitutional and human-rights-based attempt to address centuries of racial land inequality.” The ministry also said that the United Nations had praised the law as a step toward fair land redistribution.
Officials in Pretoria also pointed out how ironic it was that this kind of complaint came from a country that quit the UN Human Rights Council and still has problems with human rights at home, such as how to treat refugees and how agencies like ICE break people’s rights to due process.
The study also said that South Africa wasn’t doing enough to stop racist speech and violence against racial minorities, such as Afrikaners. Pretoria said these claims were not true.
Since Donald Trump was re-elected, diplomatic problems between Washington and Pretoria have been getting worse. This new exchange makes things even worse. During a tense meeting at the White House in May, Trump allegedly told President Cyril Ramaphosa that false claims that farms owned by white people were being illegally taken over.
Since then, the Trump administration has sped up the process for Afrikaners to get refugee visas and put 30% tariffs on South African products.
Trump is also angry at South Africa for staying neutral in the war between Israel and Hamas. As a result, Trump kicked South African Ambassador Ebrahim Rasool out of Washington.
In a linked event, the Afrikaans trade union Solidarity, which Ramaphosa criticized for lobbying in the US, said it would be going back to Washington in September. The union is going to try to get South Africa to get rid of its racist redress laws, renew its trade agreements, and improve ties between the two countries.
Tensions are rising, and Trump has hinted that he might not go to the G20 summit in Johannesburg this November. It looks like ties between the two democracies are at their worst point in years.
