Watch: Fox News, Donald Trump weigh in on South Africa’s land expropriation

fox news donald trump south africa land expropriation gage skidmore flickr cc by sa

US President Donald Trump this morning turned his eye towards South Africa after a Fox News segment, anchored by Tucker Carlson, dipped its toes into the land expropriation debate.

“South African president Cyril Ramaphosa has just begun the process of seizing land from his own citizens, without compensation, purely due to their skin color,” the report’s description on YouTube reads.

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“That’s far more racist than anything Donald Trump has ever done, of course, but elites in America barely even care.”

Read more: Google searches for South Africa spike after Fox News video, Trump tweet

In the segment, Carlson laments the South African government for racial discrimination, questioning the country’s democracy, and questioning former US President Barack Obama for praising South Africa’s current President Cyril Ramaphosa.

Donald Trump, mentioning both Carlson and Fox News, weighed in with his thoughts.

Taking to Twitter (obviously), Trump alerted his 54-million followers that Secretary of State Mike Pompeo will investigate “the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers”.

The tweet didn’t go unnoticed, racking up more than 54 000 likes, 21 ooo retweets and more than 19 000 replies at the time of writing.

‘South Africa totally rejects this narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past’

#DonaldTrump also began trending across South Africa Thursday morning.

Apart from the usual vitriol, some engaging with Trump were South Africans airing their views.

“I don’t know why #DonaldTrump thinks he’s a mini god of the world…” wrote one user.

Other Twitter users supported Carlson’s views, and were encouraged by Trump’s call for an investigation.

A few highlighted the sensitive nature of the issue.

Some wondered if the country’s land expropriation system could benefit from awarding people government owned land instead.

The South African Government has also issued an official statement on Twitter, directly mentioning Donald Trump.

“South Africa totally rejects this narrow perception which only seeks to divide our nation and reminds us of our colonial past,” the thread began. “South Africa will speed up the pace of land reform in a careful and inclusive manner that does not divide our nation.”

This isn’t the first time South Africans have scritinised Donald Trump’s comments this year.

In January, the US President came under fire for allegedly referring to a number of African countries and Haiti as “shithole” countries in a meeting with Oval Office staff. Trump later responded that it was “not the language [he] used”.

Feature image: Gage Skidmore via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0, cropped)

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