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US Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Monday imposed a host of new visa restrictions on senior members of the South African government, accusing them of "race-based discrimination," "uncompensated land seizures" and inciting "imminent violence" against minority groups.
Visa denial can extend to the immediate family members of such officials.
The new restrictions were announced by Secretary of State Marco Rubio in a statement late Monday, in follow-up to President Trump's Executive Order 14204, "Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa," that was signed in July after the South African government pushed forward with legislation to expropriate land for the purpose of land reform. Rubio said the South African government had not "sufficiently addressed" concerns about the previous actions of the South African government laid out by Rubio.
White and minority farmers and others have documented attacks and mounting intimidation on farms in South Africa as the African National Congress government under President Cyril Ramaphosa aggressively pursues land reform policies that critics charge are racially motivated. The Trump administration views the issue through the prism of human rights and basic rule of law.
Rubio emphasized that "the actions by the South African government directly undermine peace, economic stability and the rule of law, for which reason they are not compatible with the basic pillars of U.S. foreign policy."
The U.S. first granted refugee status to the families of the three Afrikaner families a few months ago, causing much consternation among officials in South Africa. The Americans have so far refused to budge on the matter in their latest escalation of the diplomatic conflict with Pretoria.
So far the South African government has refused to accept the characterization of its land policies as discriminatory, maintaining that land reform is an exclusively domestic matter to be handled through the South African Constitution as it seeks to correct the historical inequities created during the apartheid era – a characterization at odds with the views of the Trump administration.
