meta_pixel
Tapesearch Logo
Log in
PBS News Hour - Segments

The historical reality of land ownership in South Africa amid Trump’s criticisms

PBS News Hour - Segments

PBS NewsHour

News, Daily News

4.11K Ratings

🗓️ 8 March 2025

⏱️ 5 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

There’s an escalating dispute between President Trump and South Africa over a new land policy that he says discriminates against the country’s white minority. On Truth Social Friday, Trump criticized what he called the “terrible” treatment of farmers and offered them a “rapid pathway” to U.S. citizenship. Ali Rogin spoke with John Eligon, Johannesburg bureau chief for The New York Times, for more. PBS News is supported by - https://www.pbs.org/newshour/about/funders

Transcript

Click on a timestamp to play from that location

0:00.0

There's an escalating dispute between President Trump and South Africa over a new land policy

0:05.7

that he says discriminates against the country's white minority.

0:10.0

On truth social yesterday, the president criticized what he called the terrible treatment

0:14.4

of longtime farmers in the country and offered them a rapid pathway to U.S. citizenship.

0:20.5

And in February, Mr. Trump signed an executive order,

0:23.6

halting almost all foreign aid to South Africa

0:25.6

because of what it called racially discriminatory property confiscation.

0:30.6

Ali Rogan spoke earlier with John Eligham.

0:33.6

He's the Johannesburg Bureau Chief for the New York Times.

0:36.6

John, thank you so much for being with us.

0:38.4

First of all, tell us about this new land policy.

0:41.3

So essentially what the government has done is they've passed a law that allows the government to take land without providing compensation to the people they take it from.

0:48.8

Basically, the justification that the South African government gives for this is that we know through the long history of apartheid in South Africa that black people were essentially robbed up their land. So they are

0:59.6

really looking at ways to sort of make rights some of the inequalities that happened during

1:02.9

apartheid. President Trump, in his executive order, referred specifically to white South Africans,

1:08.7

but then in a later social media post, he invited all farmers

1:13.1

to consider the United States a place to come if they felt that they were being discriminated.

1:17.9

Do you think that that shift in language was deliberate?

1:20.8

It's hard to say, as we've seen with many of the president's social media posts,

1:24.5

that they're not always necessarily nuanced.

1:26.6

And race, identity, culture is a very tricky thing across the world, especially in South Africa.

1:32.0

And now that he's brought in it to all farmers, the reality is that while most commercial

...

Please login to see the full transcript.

Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from PBS NewsHour, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.

Generated transcripts are the property of PBS NewsHour and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.

Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.