The United States has announced visa restrictions on some South Africans, targeting foreign nationals whom the Trump administration says enact or enable race-based discrimination, incite violence or enable land confiscation without compensation in South Africa.
The announcement did not identify anyone barred from entering the US. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the measures addressed what he described as discrimination against Afrikaners and other minority groups, while South Africa’s presidency and foreign ministry had not immediately commented.
What the US says the restrictions address
Rubio said South Africa’s government was failing its people and accused it of pursuing racial grievance against the Afrikaner minority. US ambassador to South Africa Leo Brent Bozell III described the visa policy as the first step in what he called a series of escalatory measures. Read the context: South Africa Faces Rising Violence and Displacement Amid Anti-Immigrant Demonstrations.
The Trump administration has repeatedly claimed during its second term that South Africa is subjecting white Afrikaners to “white genocide”. The supplied account describes that claim as false. The administration has also criticised South Africa’s affirmative action policies and its approach to land expropriation.
The South African policies at issue
South Africa passed a law last year allowing the government to seize land without compensation in specific circumstances. The law includes cases in which land is abandoned or held only for speculation, but there is no large-scale expropriation of land.
Afrikaners are descended from Dutch and French settlers and governed South Africa during apartheid, a system that repressed the country’s Black majority. Since Nelson Mandela became the country’s first Black president in 1994, governments have pursued measures including Black economic empowerment and land redistribution. Those efforts have had limited impact; a 2023 Review of Political Economy article said white South Africans typically had 20 times the wealth of Black people. Related coverage: Mandela Day highlights tensions over immigration and inequality in South Africa.
Some white South Africans who say they face discrimination point to opposition leader Julius Malema’s repeated use of the chant “Kill the Boer”. The ruling African National Congress has disavowed it, and courts have found that the chant is not intended literally and does not constitute hate speech.
A wider deterioration in relations
Since the start of last year, the US has cut aid to South Africa, barred it from this year’s G20 summit in Miami and created a refugee programme for Afrikaners and other South African racial minorities. These steps have taken place as the administration dismantles refugee and asylum programmes for people fleeing war and persecution.
What happens next
Bozell said the visa restrictions were the first step in further measures, but the announcement did not provide a timetable or identify additional actions.
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