South Africa Launches International ‘Charm Offensive’ After Trump Tweet on Land Reform

The South African government has launched an international “charm offensive” to reassure foreign investors after U.S. President Donald Trump tweeted last week that his administration would study South Africa’s controversial new land reform policy.

The policy of “expropriation without compensation,” ostensibly aimed at speeding up the redistribution of land from whites to blacks, has been hotly debated in South Africa, but Trump’s tweet drew new attention to the policy and its economic risks.

South Africa’s City Press reported Monday:

South Africa’s diplomats across the globe have been instructed by International Relations and Cooperation Minister Lindiwe Sisulu to embark upon a charm offensive following Donald Trump’s misinformed tweet on land expropriation.

…

Department’s spokesperson Ndivhuwo Mabaya told City Press all international trips by government would now be used to educate stakeholders about South Africa’s parliamentary process with regard to land redistribution.

The South African government has slammed a local organization, AfriForum, which represents minority groups in South Africa, particularly Afrikaners, who disproportionately make up South Africa’s farming sector. AfriForum has been active in raising international awareness of farm murders and of the South African govenrment’s new land reform policy.

Last week, South African President Cyril Ramaphosa published an op-ed in the Financial Times defending his government’s new policy as necessary for “the extraction of … full value” from land — though he did not explain why, if land were truly to be more profitable in other hands, the market itself would not be a sufficient mechanism for redistribution.

He also denied that the new policy was an “assault on the private ownership of property,” but could not explain how the protection of property rights could be squared with the idea that the state could take land without paying for it.

Joel B. Pollak is Senior Editor-at-Large at Breitbart News. He is a winner of the 2018 Robert Novak Journalism Alumni Fellowship. He is also the co-author of How Trump Won: The Inside Story of a Revolution, which is available from Regnery. Follow him on Twitter at @joelpollak.

Photo: file