Afrikaner Groups Tell Trump They Won't Budge

President Trump followed through on his promise to punish South Africa by signing an executive order Friday stopping all aid to the country over what he called a human rights violation against a white minority group. The executive order includes a plan to resettle white South African farmers and their families as refugees in the US, the AP reports. On Saturday, groups representing some of South Africa's white minority gave Trump their answer. "We are committed to build a future here," said the chief executive of the Afrikaner trade union Solidarity. "We are not going anywhere." Developments include:

• Trump's complaints: The administration says a land expropriation law South Africa recently passed was "blatantly" discriminatory against its white Afrikaners, who are descendants of Dutch and other European colonials. The Trump administration said the South African government was allowing violent attacks against Afrikaner farming communities. It also accused South Africa of supporting "bad actors" in the world, including the militant Palestinian group Hamas, Russia, and Iran, per the AP.
• The land: Distribution of land in South Africa has been a complicated and highly emotive issue with racial connotations for more than 30 years, since the end of the apartheid system of white minority rule in 1994. It was thrust into the global spotlight after Trump and his South African-born adviser Elon Musk criticized the South African government's policies as anti-white, sometimes with false statements.
• The law: The new Expropriation Act gives the South African government scope to expropriate land from private parties, but only if it's in the public interest and under certain conditions. Trump referred to it last Sunday when he first announced his intention to stop funding to South Africa. He said South Africa's government was doing "terrible things" and claimed land was being confiscated from "certain classes." That's not true; even groups in South Africa that are challenging the law say no land has been confiscated. However, the law has prompted concern in South Africa, especially from groups representing parts of the white minority, who say it will target them and their land even though race is not mentioned in the act.
• Trump's order: The president directed a stop to hundreds of millions of dollars a year the US sends to South Africa, most of it to help its HIV/AIDS response. The US gave South Africa around $440 million last year. Parts of that funding had already been threatened by Trump's global aid freeze, but it will now all be stopped in a major blow to South Africa's health care. South Africa has around 8 million people living with HIV, and US funding is vital in supporting the largest national HIV/AIDS program in the world.

• Government's response: The foreign ministry said "a campaign of misinformation and propaganda" is being aimed at South Africa. "It is ironic that the executive order makes provision for refugee status in the US for a group in South Africa that remains amongst the most economically privileged," a statement said, per the AP. A spokesperson for President Cyril Ramaphosa said: "We value all South Africans, Black and white. The assertion that Afrikaners face arbitrary deprivation and, therefore, need to flee the country of their birth is an assertion devoid of all truth."
• Afrikaner groups: "Our members work here, and want to stay here, and they are going to stay here," said Dirk Hermann of Solidarity, which says it represents around 2 million people. At the same press conference, Kallie Kriel, CEO of the Afrikaner lobby group AfriForum, said: "We have to state categorically: We don't want to move elsewhere."

(More South Africa stories.)