August (ANA) - Afriforum on Thursday welcomed US President Donald Trump's contentious tweet on land reform and farm killings in South Africa and said it hoped pressure from Washington would make the government reconsider its plans on expropriation without compensation.
Afriforum spokesman Kallie Kriel said Trump's call for US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo to "investigate the illegal occupation of land and farms, expropriation as well as the widespread murder of farmers in South Africa" was good news for property owners and all other citizens.
“Venezuela, with a poverty rate of 90 percent, and Zimbabwe, with an unemployment rate of 90 percent, are examples that prove that the disregard of property rights ruins a country’s economy to the detriment of everyone in the country.
"Everyone in SA should, therefore, hope that the pressure from the USA will lead to the ANC reconsidering the disastrous route that they want to take SA on,” Kriel added.
Trump tweeted that he had instructed Pompeo to look into "farm and land seizures and large-scale killing of farmers" in South Africa.
His tweet followed a claim by Fox News journalist Tucker Carlson that the South African government had "started seizing land from his own citizens without compensation because they are the wrong skin colour".
Kriel recalled that in May the organisation had sent a delegation to the US to brief various organisations, including the Cato Institute and Fox News, on the South African government's plans to amend the constitution to enable land expropriation without compensation.
He added: "In the light of Trump’s instruction to the Secretary of State to investigate expropriation without compensation and farm murders, AfriForum is ready to provide additional information regarding the matter to the American government.
But, the EFF leader Julius Malema called on US President Trump to stay out of South African domestic affairs.
''We want to send a strong message to the US authorities, just like we did with the Australian government - stay out of South Africa's domestic affairs. South Africa is a post-colonial country seized with deep inequalities long designed by apartheid and colonialism. Land expropriation seeks to realise equality and human dignity...through land expropriation, we are forcing the whites to share the land which was gained through a crime against humanity,'' Malema told reporters Johannesburg.
''Donald, we are not scared of you and your USA and western imperialist forces. We are not the generation that is going to kneel at the statue of western imperialism and accept to live in the indignity of landless blacks.''
The SA government has slammed Trump's tweet based from a Fox News report that the SA government has amended the Constitution and is seizing land from white farmers.
The Department of International Relations said the tweet was factually incorrect and would raise the matter with the US embassy in Pretoria and US Secretary of State Michael Pompeo.
Communications Minister Nomvula Mokonyane echoed the same sentiments in a post-Cabinet briefing on Thursday, adding, however, that she does not believe that the tweet has affected relations between the two countries.
- African News Agency (ANA)
