As you may recall, Trump issued an executive order on February 7 that said

Washington “shall promote the resettlement of Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.”

He ordered the Departments of State and Homeland Security “to prioritize humanitarian relief, including admission and resettlement through the United States Refugee Admissions Program, for Afrikaners in South Africa who are victims of unjust racial discrimination.”

…

On X this month, South African native Elon Musk, Trump’s top adviser, accused his home country of pushing “openly racist ownership laws.” South Africa rejected a license for his Starlink internet company because it did not meet BEE requirements.

Ebrahim Rasool, the South African ambassador to Washington, said Trump’s order is based on false premises, including that “Afrikaners would fit the bill of refugees because refugees have a sense of being poor, dispossessed and oppressed.” None of that, he added during an interview, applies to Afrikaners, “the highest income earners in South Africa.”

South Africa’s 2017 land audit showed that White people own 72 percent of individual farm and agricultural holdings, compared with 4 percent for “Africans,” which refers to the Black population. Compare that with the overall population, which is 81 percent Black and 7 percent White, almost the opposite of the landownership demographics.

With that context, the South African government recently approved an Expropriation Act that allows it to acquire land for “nil compensation” under narrow circumstances. Those limited situations include “where the land is not being used and the owner’s main purpose is … to benefit from appreciation of its market value,” and “where an owner has abandoned the land by failing to exercise control over it.”

No land has been confiscated under the law. There are no plans to force landowners away from their properties.

“The people of this country know the pain of forced removals,” South African President Cyril Ramaphosa told parliament, as happened to Black people under apartheid. “That is why we will never allow forced removals again.”

But Musk and Trump (in that order) are making a point.

H/t What a Maroon