US-South Africa Tensions Deepen Over Land Reform and Visa Curbs
A dispute over how South Africa is addressing the legacy of apartheid has deepened tensions with the United States after Washington imposed visa restrictions on some South African nationals.
The United States says the restrictions target people involved in or supporting policies it considers discriminatory against white South Africans. Washington has not named the individuals affected. South Africa has rejected the allegations and defended its right to introduce laws aimed at addressing inequalities created by decades of racial segregation.
At the centre of the disagreement is South Africa’s long-running land reform programme. During apartheid, laws restricted Black South Africans from owning and accessing large areas of land. The 1913 Natives Land Act, for example, limited African land ownership to a small portion of the country and contributed to decades of forced removals and unequal land ownership.
Since the end of apartheid, successive governments have pursued land reform through land redistribution, restitution and changes to land tenure. The government says the programme is intended to address historical dispossession and expand access to land, while the issue remains politically and economically sensitive because of questions around property rights, compensation and agricultural production.
The visa restrictions have added another layer to already strained relations between Pretoria and Washington. The dispute follows earlier disagreements between the two governments over South Africa’s domestic policies and other foreign policy positions. The United States has also taken steps affecting South Africa’s participation in the upcoming Group of 20 summit.
South Africa is calling for the disagreement to be handled through diplomatic engagement, while the United States has indicated that further measures could follow. The latest dispute therefore goes beyond travel restrictions, putting South Africa’s approach to correcting the effects of apartheid at the centre of a growing diplomatic disagreement with one of its major international partners.
