Trump Ends U.S. Foreign Aid to South Africa

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President Trump issued an executive order cutting off U.S. foreign aid to South Africa. It was the right decision and long overdue.

In Fiscal Year 2023 alone, the United States provided just short of $440 million to South Africa. Incomplete figures compiled to date for Fiscal Year 2024 show more than $323 million of U.S. taxpayers’ money going to South Africa. In its Fiscal Year 2025 budget request, the Biden administration asked for $442.6 million for foreign aid to South Africa.

President Trump is stopping the gravy train, citing two reasons for his action in the order that he issued on February 7^th.

The first reason is South Africa’s recently enacted Expropriation Act 13 of 2024, which enables the government of South Africa to seize minority whites’ agricultural property without compensation.

The second reason for the cutoff of foreign aid to South Africa is its “aggressive positions towards the United States and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide in the International Court of Justice, and reinvigorating its relations with Iran to develop commercial, military, and nuclear arrangements.”

Contrast President Trump’s swift action to hold the South African regime to account with the Biden administration’s business as usual in doling out hundreds of millions of dollars to South Africa. It did not matter to Joe Biden that his own State Department sharply criticized South Africa’s human rights record.

The Executive Summary to the South Africa 2023 Human Rights Report, published in April 2024, noted credible reports of shocking human rights violations. They include arbitrary killings; torture; child, early, and forced marriage; crimes involving violence or threats of violence targeting members of national groups, specifically foreigners; and trafficking in persons, including forced labor. On top of all that, the State Department report noted the rampant corruption in South Africa.

To make matters worse, according to the Biden State Department report, “The government did not take credible steps to investigate, prosecute, and punish officials who may have committed human rights abuses. There were numerous reports of impunity.”

Despite all its self-righteous rhetoric about human rights, the Biden administration did nothing to hold South Africa to account for its egregious human rights violations.

The Biden administration also gave the South African regime a pass after that anti-Semitic government brought an outrageous complaint before the International Court of Justice charging Israel with genocide against the Palestinians living in Gaza. Nothing could be further from the truth. Hamas and its fellow terrorists committed genocidal massacres, rapes, torture, and abductions inside Israel on October 7, 2023 and then used Palestinian civilians in Gaza as human shields when Israel retaliated.

South Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa shamelessly described the day that more Jews were slaughtered than any other single day since the Holocaust as “the start of an onslaught against the Palestinian people.” A cabinet member and leader of South Africa’s pro-Muslim Al Jama-Ah political party echoed the Iranian regime’s call for the elimination of Israel, declaring that Israel “needs to be wiped off the face of the Earth.”

The South African regime has aligned itself with Hamas, welcoming an official Hamas delegation with red carpet treatment and signing a memorandum of understanding with Hamas directed against Israel. As for Hamas’s state sponsor Iran, South Africa’s Minister of International Relations and Cooperation refused last year when given a chance to acknowledge that Iran is ruled by an authoritarian regime. On the sidelines of the BRICS Summit in Kazan Russia last fall, South African President Ramaphosa held bilateral talks with Iranian President Masoud Pezeshkian that focused on strengthening political and economic relations between the two countries. President Ramaphosa had previously displayed his favorable attitude towards Iran by inviting the world’s number one state sponsor of terrorism to join the BRICS intergovernmental economic group, which includes Russia and China, in the first place.

The South African regime has also cozied up with Russia and China. For example, in February 2023 the South African National Defense Forces conducted a trilateral naval exercise with Russian and Chinese naval forces, which South Africa hosted.

South African President Ramaphosa and Russian President Vladimir Putin held bilateral talks on the eve of the BRICS summit last fall, which Russia hosted. Ramaphosa told Putin at their meeting that South Africa sees Russia as “a valued ally.”

China is South Africa’s biggest trade partner. Following talks between South African President Ramaphosa and Chinese President Xi Jinping in China, the two leaders issued a joint statement on September 2, 2024 elevating their bilateral ties to an “All-Round Strategic Cooperative Partnership in a New Era.”

Former President Biden praised South Africa and lavished hundreds of millions of dollars on this friend of Hamas, Iran, Russia, and China. President Trump sees through the façade and is treating the South African regime harshly, as it truly deserves.