0:00

The South African situation is very

0:02

very dangerous and very bad

0:04

for a lot of people

0:06

There's tremendously bad things going

0:08

on and including the confiscation

0:10

of property and worse much

0:12

worse than that You know

0:14

what I'm talking about you

0:16

might not know what he's

0:18

talking about we got you

0:20

President Trump says that Africaners,

0:22

white South Africans who decades ago

0:25

architected a brutal system of

0:27

segregation laws known as apartheid,

0:29

are now themselves victims of

0:31

discrimination after the passage of

0:33

a law that allows their land

0:35

to be expropriated without compensation.

0:37

Trump is offering these white

0:39

South Africans resettlement in the

0:41

US and they are gently turning him

0:43

down. We see our future in Africa.

0:45

But what got Trump interested

0:48

in South Africa? And is

0:50

it unelected white South African

0:53

Vice President Elon Musk? We're

0:55

going to ask on today explained.

0:57

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at netsweet.com/Vox. This is today

2:11

explained. I'm Noelle King with

2:13

Chris McGreal. Chris is a

2:15

reporter for the Guardian, who

2:17

covered South Africa for many

2:19

years, including the end of

2:21

apartheid and the start of

2:23

South Africa's democracy. Recently, Chris

2:25

wrote a piece about the

2:27

influential white South Africans in

2:29

President Trump's orbit. The argument

2:31

is being made that Afrikanas,

2:33

who were the group that

2:35

imposed a partate on South

2:37

Africa in 1948, the very

2:39

rigid form of racial segregation,

2:41

are now victims of the

2:44

post-aparteed era, that they're being

2:46

targeted with as the White

2:48

House and others characterize it,

2:50

racist laws, that they're victims

2:52

of discrimination in the post-aparteed

2:54

order, and that they are

2:56

victims of politically targeted violence.

2:58

This is the argument being

3:00

made. What are these so-called

3:02

racist laws? What's Trump referring

3:04

to? Well what's upsetting Trump

3:06

and others is that essentially

3:08

South Africa has an affirmative

3:10

action program for the black

3:12

majority and other minority people

3:14

of color who were discriminated

3:16

against and left very much

3:18

at a disadvantage by a

3:20

party. So there's for instance

3:22

a black empowerment legal requirement

3:24

for businesses. There's upliftment in

3:26

education, in job opportunities in

3:28

the civil service. That is

3:30

now being characterized as discrimination

3:32

against... the white minority. Although

3:34

it's worth bearing in mind

3:36

that the white minority at

3:38

the end of a party,

3:40

which is 30 years ago

3:42

now, 30 years later, still

3:44

hangs on to its big

3:46

houses, its swimming pools, its

3:49

Mercedes-Benz. When does Donald Trump

3:51

become interested in South Africa,

3:53

and why? So there's a

3:55

group in South Africa. which

3:57

describes itself as an Afrikana

3:59

rights group called Afri Forum

4:01

and the Southern Poverty Law

4:03

Center has described it as

4:05

white supremacist in a suit

4:07

and a tie. The leadership

4:09

of that group came to

4:11

the United States in 2018

4:13

and amongst other things they

4:15

appeared on Tucker Carlson show

4:17

on Fox News. South Africa

4:19

is a diverse country but

4:21

the South African government would

4:23

like to make it much

4:25

less diverse. They laid out

4:27

the case that whites were

4:29

the victims of discrimination in South

4:31

Africa, but particularly latched onto this issue

4:34

of the killing of white farmers. Basically

4:36

threatening white farmers, that if they do

4:38

not voluntarily hand over their land to

4:41

black people, then there would be a

4:43

violent takeover. So the situation is very

4:45

dire in South Africa. They would be

4:48

tortured to death and it would receive

4:50

very little news coverage. Which is totally

4:52

untrue. But they appeared on Tucker Carlson.

4:55

Trump was watching, this is when

4:57

he's president in 2018, and he tweets

4:59

to his then Secretary of State Mike

5:01

Pompeo, telling him to watch the situation

5:03

in South Africa with the whites and

5:06

how they're being victimized, and others pick

5:08

up on this around the states afterwards,

5:10

and it starts to gain some momentum.

5:12

In the meantime, President Trump

5:14

has become very close to Elon Musk,

5:17

who of course is a white South

5:19

African. Do we know whether Elon Musk's

5:21

ideas about South Africa have influenced Donald

5:23

Trump at all? Well, you'd have

5:25

to assume they did because there's no

5:28

real explanation otherwise as to why Trump

5:30

is so engaged with this issue, why,

5:32

you know, three weeks into his second

5:34

term of office, he suddenly... issuing this

5:37

executive order about one country. So one

5:39

has to imagine that it's Elon Musk

5:41

who was born in apartheid South Africa

5:43

and grew up there left at 18,

5:46

but he's not the only one. There's

5:48

a group of white men that all

5:50

have apartheid South African childhoods in some

5:52

form or other, known as the PayPal

5:55

Mafia. They all get to know each other

5:57

at the top of PayPal. They all get

5:59

rich through PayPal. These include the

6:01

billionaire libertarian Peter Thiel. Now,

6:03

Thiel was born in Germany,

6:05

but his father took him

6:07

to South Africa at a

6:09

young age. And then the

6:11

other kind of two major

6:13

players are a guy called

6:15

David Sachs, who is another

6:17

tech billionaire. He's now Trump's

6:19

AI and cryptos are. He

6:21

was born in Cape Town,

6:23

although his parents moved to

6:25

Tennessee when he was five.

6:27

So he did not grow

6:29

up. fully kind of imbued

6:31

with the apartheid system, although

6:33

he grew up in the

6:35

white South African diaspora of

6:38

the time. What would life

6:40

have been like in the

6:42

1980s for a kid like

6:44

Elon Musk growing up under

6:46

apartheid? What was the deal?

6:48

It separated every aspect of

6:50

life, so jobs were reserved

6:52

only for white people. Interracial

6:54

marriage and interracial sex was

6:56

illegal under the immorality act.

6:58

Every aspect of daily life

7:00

was separate. But Musk's teenage

7:02

years would have been in

7:04

the huge tumult of South

7:06

Africa's uprising against apartheid. By

7:08

the mid-80s you've got a

7:10

state of emergency, you've got

7:12

civic society, constantly protesting, you've

7:14

got mass arrests, children incarcerated

7:16

in their thousands. Under the

7:18

sweeping powers of the state

7:20

of emergency, an estimated 30,000

7:22

people, the majority black have

7:24

been detained. Cape Town was

7:27

under siege. Police vehicles on

7:29

every street corner. The city,

7:31

overwhelmed with protesters, defying the

7:33

government with marches. In a

7:35

situation of injustice and oppression,

7:37

there can be no neutrality.

7:39

You have to take sides.

7:41

You have to say, am

7:43

I on the side of

7:45

justice? Or am I on

7:47

the side of injustice? The

7:49

country increasingly ungovernable. army attempting

7:51

to keep some kind of

7:53

order in the townships. So

7:55

Musk was growing up at

7:57

this time of incredible turmoil

7:59

and on the streets of

8:01

Victoria where he went to

8:03

school he would have seen

8:05

the Afrikana resistance. movement which

8:07

was an openly neo-Nazi group

8:09

that actually modeled its badge

8:11

on the swastika and had

8:13

the same colors as the

8:15

Nazis and marched up and

8:18

down the streets doing Hitler

8:20

salutes. Errol Musk, Elon's father,

8:22

has described his parents in

8:24

law as open neo-Nazis and

8:26

fascists and supporters, enthusiastic supporters

8:28

of the party. They used

8:30

to support Hitler and all

8:32

that sort of stuff. was

8:34

a member of something called

8:36

the Progressive Federal Party and

8:38

that really was a small

8:40

opposition party in Parliament. opposed

8:42

to apartheid. We never supported

8:44

apartheid really, but it was

8:46

something we inherited from the

8:48

European countries. But leaves the

8:50

party eventually in the 1980s

8:52

because it was advocating one

8:54

person, one vote, in other

8:56

words, complete equality of democracy,

8:58

and he didn't agree with

9:00

that. He was like a

9:02

lot of white South Africans

9:04

of that era, particularly English

9:06

speakers who were doing quite

9:09

well out of the economics

9:11

of apartheid, who said that

9:13

they were against it in

9:15

principle, but... actually didn't do

9:17

very much to oppose it

9:19

and certainly benefited from it

9:21

enormously. And so he was

9:23

the liberal in the family

9:25

but obviously only up to

9:27

a point. So to bring

9:29

us back to the present

9:31

day, has Elon Musk said

9:33

anything about white South Africans

9:35

and what he believes is

9:37

happening in that country right

9:39

now? Yes, he's had plenty

9:41

to say. He's retweeted or

9:43

commented on tweets that essentially

9:45

argue that there's either a

9:47

genocide underway against whites or

9:49

a genocide coming. He recently

9:51

openly challenged the President of

9:53

South Africa, Cyril Ramoso, on

9:55

Twitter, accusing him of imposing

9:58

racist discriminatory laws against white

10:00

people. So he's very much

10:02

taken an adversarial position on

10:04

this, which I suspect at

10:06

least go some way to

10:08

explain why Trump... Trump has

10:10

done the same. One thing

10:12

we learned during the first

10:14

Trump administration was that Donald

10:16

Trump and the people close

10:18

to him often have more

10:20

than one motive for their

10:22

beliefs and some things that

10:24

might seem ideological are not

10:26

ideological or less ideological than

10:28

we might think. Does Elon

10:30

must have any other incentive

10:32

to push Donald Trump to

10:34

take a stand on this

10:36

other than thinking white South

10:38

Africans are being discriminated against?

10:40

Well, as it happened, we

10:42

watched Musk's commentary on white

10:44

South Africans ramp up at

10:46

a time when he was

10:49

starting to get into conflict

10:51

with the South African government

10:53

over Starlink, his satellite business.

10:55

He wanted to get it

10:57

into South Africa, but part

10:59

of the present dispensation, compensating

11:01

for apartheid, is that all

11:03

foreign businesses investing in South

11:05

Africa have to have a

11:07

local black empowerment component. In

11:09

telecoms, which is the area

11:11

of Starlink, it's 30%. So

11:13

there has to be 30%

11:15

investment in the local business.

11:17

and Musk objects to this.

11:19

He says he doesn't want

11:21

anybody else in his business

11:23

and he's trying and may

11:25

actually succeed to break down

11:27

the requirement that he has

11:29

to have this black empowerment

11:31

element in his investments in

11:33

South Africa. There are other

11:35

motives and I think this

11:37

isn't the only case where

11:40

you can look and see

11:42

a financial incentive in some

11:44

of these decisions that are

11:46

being made. So I guess

11:48

I would say, you know...

11:50

read up on South Africa,

11:52

look at what's really going

11:54

on rather than just take

11:56

the word of those who

11:58

have the power to set

12:00

policy. stolen in South Africa.

12:18

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just playing. Get the Angel

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Respecial on McDonald's now. I'm participating in

15:24

restaurants for a limited time. We're

15:29

back, I'm Noelle King. This new

15:31

law that has caused so much

15:33

controversy in South Africa allows the

15:36

government, in certain cases, to take

15:38

white South Africans' land without compensating

15:40

them. It has divided the government

15:42

and it's being challenged in court.

15:45

For more on who the Africaners

15:47

are, we call Johnny Steinberg. Johnny

15:49

is an award-winning South African writer,

15:52

author of many books, including Winnie

15:54

and Nelson Portrait of a Marriage,

15:56

South African farmer. Johnny, what are

15:58

Africaners? Africanas are

16:01

the descendants of the first white

16:03

people who settled in South Africa.

16:05

That dates from 1652. At the

16:08

time Holland was a great imperial

16:10

power. About a century and a

16:12

half later, when Holland was in

16:15

trouble in the Napoleonic Wars, Britain

16:17

took over the Cape Colony, a

16:19

whole lot of English-speaking white people

16:21

arrived. And it was the descendants

16:24

who formed themselves into Afrikana nationalists,

16:26

into a nationalist project in the

16:28

late 19th, early 20th century. And

16:31

I guess it was to stand

16:33

up against the British and to

16:35

suppress black people. And that project

16:38

saw its culmination in 1948 when

16:40

the party of Afrikano nationalism, the

16:42

National Party, came to power and

16:44

instituted a partate. And what was

16:47

it like? What was apartheid like?

16:49

You know, a partate is famously

16:51

one of many brutal regimes in

16:54

the 20th century. The policy of

16:56

a partate, literally separateness, has been

16:58

elevated by the government of South

17:01

Africa from a mere theory of

17:03

racial superiority. to the law of

17:05

the land. For decades, the National

17:08

Party enforced racial segregation and violently

17:10

repressed any dissent. Many died fighting

17:12

it. Some famous. Others forgotten by

17:14

all but their families. Many millions

17:17

of people were displaced from their

17:19

homes. In the political struggle against

17:21

apartheid, many thousands of people were

17:24

killed and detained. It was a

17:26

long bitter, which miraculously ended peacefully

17:28

in a negotiated settlement in 1994.

17:31

What happened in 94? Well, four

17:33

years earlier in 1990, the last

17:35

president of a party, it's F.W.

17:37

to clerk, I released Nelson Mandela.

17:40

There's Mr. Mandela. Mr. Nelson Mandela,

17:42

a free man, taking his first

17:44

steps into a New South Africa.

17:47

Unband his party, the ANC. decided

17:49

that a party would end by

17:51

a negotiated settlement with the people

17:54

who wants his enemy. The eyes

17:56

of the world are presently focused

17:58

on all South Africans. All of

18:01

us now have an opportunity and

18:03

the responsibility to prove that we

18:05

are capable of a peaceful process

18:07

in creating a new South Africa.

18:10

You know, a lot of people

18:12

died in those four years, there

18:14

was a lot of violence, it

18:17

was a complicated process, but it

18:19

was in the end a peaceful

18:21

settlement that both sides agreed to,

18:24

bringing in democracy in April 1994.

18:26

More than 300 years of white

18:28

domination ended for good, with the

18:30

swearing-in of Nelson Mandela as this

18:33

African nation's first black president. So,

18:35

Haleknego. So the African honors went

18:37

from having all of the power

18:40

and from having this system apartheid

18:42

that basically kept them in power.

18:44

After the negotiated settlement, what happened

18:47

to this group? It was a

18:49

pretty gentle settlement on white people.

18:51

Afrikaans people were about just over

18:54

half of the white population. Most

18:56

people carried on living their lives

18:58

pretty much as they were before,

19:00

to be honest. You know, that's

19:03

a simple version of the story.

19:05

When you scratch underneath, more complicated

19:07

things are happening. One

19:10

of the things happening is that

19:12

crime rates absolutely soared in the

19:14

later part-aid and early post-apartate era.

19:16

And white people became victims of

19:18

crimes in ways that they didn't

19:20

know under a part-aid, which was

19:22

very frightening. I mean, another thing

19:24

happening, and this is about the

19:26

land. This is not about all

19:28

white people or all African people,

19:31

but is about farmers. a policy

19:33

of redress was set in place

19:35

in the mid-1990s. And to explain

19:37

what happened, it's necessary to go

19:39

back to 1913, when a law

19:41

was passed disallowing black ownership of

19:43

land in South Africa. Many many

19:45

people displaced from their land in

19:47

the decades after that. By the

19:49

early 1970s, several million people had

19:51

been dispatched from their land. And

19:53

a policy of redress was set

19:55

in place in the mid-1990s. And

19:57

among other things that allowed people

19:59

who could show that they... had

20:01

their land taken away from them

20:03

after 1913 to get it back.

20:05

But not by confiscating land, not

20:07

by taking it away from those

20:09

who owned it, but by buying

20:11

it back at market prices. So

20:13

that was the core of the

20:15

land reform scheme, just stated that

20:17

it's most simple. So in the

20:19

mid-1990s, there's this process of land

20:21

reform. And it's now 30 years

20:23

later. Is that process still underway?

20:25

It is underway and you know

20:27

I think Many white people's grievances

20:29

about that process are less about

20:31

the policies themselves and the way

20:34

that they've been implemented. Black and

20:36

white South Africans are both enormously

20:38

enormously frustrated with South Africa's government

20:40

for its levels of inefficiency and

20:42

its corruption. And very often anger

20:44

at that melts with angle of

20:46

the substance and the content of

20:48

policy. You know, a fair amount

20:50

of land has been redistributed. It

20:52

has not been a particularly successful

20:54

or a particularly well-managed process. It

20:56

has left both poor... black people

20:58

and white land holders and others

21:00

dissatisfied. So a lot has to

21:02

do with the corruption and the

21:04

inefficiencies of the process itself. President

21:06

Trump doesn't always speak with a

21:08

great deal of accuracy. When he

21:10

talks about South Africa now, as

21:12

he has been doing recently, he

21:14

will say things like, the land

21:16

of white South Africans is being

21:18

stolen. Is this an idea that

21:20

Donald Trump just came up with

21:22

himself or is this idea prevalent

21:24

in South Africa also? Well, if

21:26

you look at South African's response

21:28

to Donald Trump saying that. Nobody

21:30

has agreed with him. You know,

21:32

land has not been stolen from

21:34

anybody in South Africa since 1994.

21:37

A lot of land has been

21:39

bought at market prices and redistributed,

21:41

but not stolen. As for where

21:43

these ideas come from, you know,

21:45

there have been South African organizations

21:47

that have lobbied Trump very, very

21:49

vocally, very persistently, for a number

21:51

of years, unmatters of land redistribution,

21:53

but also on matters of crime,

21:55

of the extent to which people

21:57

who live in rural South Africa

21:59

are. are vulnerable and many white

22:01

farmers have been victims of very

22:03

violent crime. And Trump has heard

22:05

about all of that from a

22:07

very vocal, very articulate lobby that

22:09

says that violent crime against farmers

22:11

is not coincidental, that it's organized,

22:13

that there's something behind it, an

22:15

attempt to push them off the

22:17

land. He has been told that

22:19

by pretty extreme forces in South African

22:22

society, not mainstream ones. Could you dig

22:24

in a bit more on violence against

22:26

white farmers? What does that mean? What does

22:28

that look like? generally live in remote

22:30

areas. They're far from rapid response. They're

22:33

far from police. There are a lot

22:35

of guns in South Africa. There's a

22:37

lot of unemployed young men in South

22:40

Africa. A lot of people making a

22:42

living from crime. You know, people enter

22:44

a remote property and hold up the

22:46

people at gun points to take their

22:49

possessions, sometimes kill them. Sometimes there's a

22:51

terrible level of brutality in South African

22:54

predatory crime. In the last 10 20 years

22:56

in this area, I can... Name 23

22:58

attacks, murders on farmers. We

23:01

were busy having breakfast and they

23:03

just walk around with a shotgun,

23:05

two pistols and a stick and

23:07

they said we are going to

23:10

kill you today. Some of them

23:12

they have that past ideology of

23:14

saying no, the farmers took our

23:16

land for free and when they

23:19

go there they take out their

23:21

anger on them. So you think

23:23

there is a racial... There is

23:25

that racial element in it as

23:28

well. Levels of violence in South

23:30

Africa are extreme. You know, in

23:32

a country of 62, 63 million

23:34

people, there are 20,000 murders a

23:36

year that is breathtaking. It's a

23:38

violent place. And it's absolutely understandable

23:40

and natural that, you know, the

23:43

white farming community would feel under

23:45

siege, would feel vulnerable, would feel

23:47

scared. But it's another thing to

23:49

say that there's an organized plot

23:51

against them, that this is... manifestation

23:53

of a deeper attempt to throw

23:55

them off their land. You know,

23:57

if you look at who is

23:59

in South Africa, if you look

24:01

at her capital murder rates, those

24:03

most vulnerable to being killed are

24:05

unemployed young black men. And that's

24:07

not for a moment to say

24:09

that white farmers should not feel

24:12

afraid and should not take action

24:14

to defend themselves. But the idea

24:16

that they're specially victimized is untenable.

24:18

And so responding to this, President

24:20

Trump has made this offer to

24:22

help resettle Africaners in the United

24:24

States. Have any of them said,

24:26

yeah, we'd like to go? What's

24:28

the response there? People are pretty

24:30

bewildered by the offer, you know,

24:32

including the people who've been lobbying

24:34

Trump. Nobody has taken them up

24:36

in it. The head of Agri,

24:38

South Africa, it's pretty mainstream, perhaps

24:40

a center-right organization, said, we're farming

24:42

here and we're farming successfully. We

24:44

don't see large-scale land grabs in

24:46

South Africa. What we see is

24:48

at this stage still very reasonable

24:50

as is any country. in the

24:52

world. The day after Trump made

24:54

that announcement I was on a

24:56

flight from Johannesburg to London and

24:58

boarding the plane it was full

25:00

of white South Africans who were

25:02

joking about it saying well it's

25:04

diverse our flights to New York

25:06

let's go and live in America.

25:08

It was really an object of

25:10

fun. So if Africaners are not

25:12

interested in coming to the United

25:14

States and Many of them, as

25:16

you've laid out, will say, look,

25:18

the politics in this country are

25:21

messy, but it's not like a

25:23

genocide is being committed against us,

25:25

which is another rumor that we've

25:27

talked about. Why do you think

25:29

President Trump is making this offer?

25:31

Do you have any sense of

25:33

what is really behind this? Well,

25:35

I think it's because it's easy

25:37

for him because there's no downside.

25:39

He gets to perform a very

25:41

powerful and entertaining anti-DEI performance in

25:43

front of the world. He also

25:45

potentially gets a middle-sized country to

25:47

change its foreign policy or certainly

25:49

be under enormous pressure to do

25:51

that. So South Africa becomes an

25:53

exemplar. It becomes a lesson to

25:55

the world in what American power

25:57

under Trump might mean. It causes

25:59

others to move with caution. I

26:01

think what Donald Trump is doing

26:03

has has shaken up South Africa

26:05

and has sharpened divisions because although

26:07

Nobody thinks that there's genocide taking

26:09

place, although nobody thinks that white

26:11

land is being confiscated en masse.

26:13

You know, there are powerful forces

26:15

in South Africa which would like

26:17

to use what Trump is saying

26:19

to further their own legitimate agendas,

26:21

which is to contest the government's

26:23

policies of racial redress, to contest

26:25

its policies of land reform. And

26:27

this strengthens their hand. And it's

26:30

natural that they would do that.

26:32

So I think that matters that

26:34

are contentious in South Africa matters

26:36

that are highly, highly, highly, highly

26:38

have become more contentious, more volatile,

26:40

you know, their force in South

26:42

Africa which are using what Trump

26:44

has done to open up space

26:46

for their agenda. But that's kind

26:48

of expected, of course they're going

26:50

to do that, and in a

26:52

democratic country, why shouldn't they? Johnny

26:55

Steinberg. He teaches at Yale. His

26:57

latest book is Winnie and Nelson,

26:59

Portrait of a Marriage. He's also

27:01

the author of Midlands. Avashire Artsy

27:03

and Travis Larchuck produced our show

27:05

today. They were edited by Miranda

27:07

Kennedy and Dolly Myers, fact checked

27:09

by Laura Bullard, and mixed by

27:11

Patrick Boyne and Andrea Kristen's daughter.

27:14

I'm Noel King. It's Today Explained.

27:40

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