South Africa slams planned US sanctions over alleged racial discrimination

South Africa has called the United States’s plans to impose sanctions on individuals there for alleged discrimination against white Afrikaners a result of “mischaracterisations” being promoted by “fringe groups”.

“We remain committed to addressing these challenges through our constitutional institutions, democratic processes and the rule of law, with the objective of building a more equal and inclusive society for all South Africans,” South African Minister for International Relations and Cooperation Ronald Lamola said in a statement on Wednesday.

Lamola was responding to an announcement made on Tuesday by US Secretary of State Marco Rubio that Washington would be enacting a new policy aimed at South Africans involved in what he called “race-based” discrimination against white Afrikaners.

Rubio said the US would restrict visas for individuals “responsible for, or complicit in the enactment or implementation of laws or policies that enable uncompensated land seizures, race-based discrimination, and/or the incitement of imminent violence against members of minority ethnic or racial groups in South Africa”.

Afrikaners are a minority in South Africa that descends from mostly Dutch colonial settlers, who formalised a system of apartheid in the country that saw land and resources seized from the majority Black population, who were largely relegated to live in enclaves called “Bantustans”.

The apartheid system persisted until 1994, when the country’s first democratic elections brought Black Africans into power.

A 2017 South African government report found that whites, who make up about 7 percent of the population, owned disproportionately large amounts of land, including 72 percent of the individually owned farmland.

South Africa has undertaken programmes to buy land and redistribute it, and in 2025 passed a law that would allow expropriation of land, including in some limited cases without compensating owners.

US President Trump has been lobbied by Afrikaner groups decrying that law and what they say is government-backed discrimination and violent attacks against them, claims that the South African government says are misinformation.

South Africa has also been targeted by Trump for its filing of a case in the International Court of Justice accusing Israel of genocide in Gaza.

The Trump administration has allowed white Afrikaners to receive asylum in the US, and last year froze most foreign assistance to South Africa.