Daily SumUp

President Donald Trump said Friday South African farmers were welcome to settle in the United States after repeating his accusations that the government was “confiscating” land from white people as he announced an end to federal funding.

Trump posted on his Truth Social platform that “any Farmer (with family!) from South Africa, seeking to flee that country for reasons of safety, will be invited into the United States of America with a rapid pathway to Citizenship.”

He said the process would begin immediately, calling the country a “bad place to be right now” as he announced a halt to all US aid to Pretoria.

Trump and Pretoria are locked in a diplomatic row over a land expropriation act that the Republican leader says will lead to the takeover of white-owned farms.

The South African presidency swiftly responded, saying in a statement that it would not engage in “counterproductive megaphone diplomacy.”

Trump, whose close aide Elon Musk was born in South Africa, said in February that a law signed the previous month would “enable the government of South Africa to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation.”

The law stipulates that the government may, in certain circumstances, offer “nil compensation” for property it decides to expropriate in the public interest.