Last week, US President Donald Trump signed an executive order freezing US aid to South Africa, saying that their new land ownership law – meant to address the legacy of apartheid – “blatantly discriminates against ethnic minority Afrikaners.” This came just days after Elon Musk railed against the law on Twitter, calling it “openly racist.”
In this interview, South Africa’s Ambassador to the US Ebrahim Rasool sits down with Mehdi to discuss the new law, as well as Trump and Musk’s decision to “interfere” with South Africa’s internal politics.
“Even his [Musk’s] own supporters back home are reeling under the impact of what has been occasioned,” Rasool tells Mehdi. “They know that there is no land confiscation. They know that 30 years later, this is the most benign land reform that has come in. They know that Afrikaners and whites own 70% of the land to this day and all the farms – mostly – in South Africa.”
The ambassador also discussed the country’s ICJ case against Israel, which the Trump administration cited as one of the reasons for freezing aid to South Africa.
“The growing consensus in South Africa is that whatever we've experienced in South Africa is on steroids in Palestine,” Rasool tells Mehdi. “The template of apartheid has been completely magnified… That is the kind of DNA that we recognized as South Africans.”
Rasool criticized Trump and Musk for meddling in other countries’ politics, telling Mehdi that, “South Africa will not be falling into the temptation that President Trump and Mr. Musk have fallen into themselves, and that is to interfere in the internal politics of other countries, as was done with Britain and Germany and others.”
Watch the full interview above to hear the two discuss South Africa’s new coalition government, reports that South Africa may give Musk’s companies a pass on the country’s Black empowerment rules, and Rasool’s response to Trump’s plan to take over Gaza.
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