Recently, the United States began receiving refugees from Africa because, as Mr. Trump alleges, they are suffering a genocide. Not the war-torn Democratic Republic of the Congo, nor Sudan, but White South Africans. Mr. Trump signed an executive order cutting aid to South Africa, claiming the country was discriminating against White South Africans due to a land expropriation law. Assertions of genocide have been widely debunked by the South African government, human rights organizations, and White South Africans on social media.
So why the Expropriation Act, which is nothing unique, like our Constitutional idea of eminent domain? A brief history. South Africa came under British and Dutch colonial rule in the late 1800s and they began to restrict the rights of Black South Africans, denying rights like voting and owning land. From 1948-1992, the era of Apartheid rule flourished, legally codifying a brutal form of segregation modeled after American Jim Crow. Despite being less than 20% of the population, White South Africans owned 87% of the land, by law.
Today, White South Africans make up only 8% of the population but own 72% of the nation’s private farmland, a number that doesn’t include corporate owned lands. A significant problem the Expropriation Act is trying to remedy is large swaths of land are not being used at all, just gaining value, causing missed opportunities for the nation’s struggling economy.
To be blunt, I am getting really tired of the language of justice being co- opted and turned topsy turvy. There are Africans and others truly suffering through genocide. People who are being forced to give up land they aren't using, that was stolen in the first place, is a perverse use of a term like genocide.
I am Joseph Flynn and that is my perspective.
