Why is Trump Angry With South Africa?

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

“South Africa is doing very bad things. Expropriating private property. Using G20 to promote ‘solidarity, equality, & sustainability,’” American Secretary of State Marco Rubio posted Feb. 6 on X. Rubio also skipped a Group of 20 (G20) economic summit held in Johannesburg in late February. Why?

This came after U.S. President Donald Trump criticized the South African government over an act signed into law by South African President Cyril Ramaphosa in January. According to the Expropriation Bill, the government may in some circumstances offer “nil compensation” for property where land is expropriated in the public interest. Opponents, including Trump, argue it is a threat to the principle of private ownership.

Trump on Feb. 2 accused the South African government of “hateful rhetoric” towards “racially disfavored landowners” by confiscating land and “treating certain classes of people very badly. The leadership is doing some terrible things, horrible things. So that’s under investigation right now.” Trump warned that “we will act. Also, I will be cutting off all future funding to South Africa until a full investigation of this situation has been completed!”

The president on Feb. 7 issued an executive order that charged South Africa with “blatant discrimination” against “ethnic minority descendants of settler groups,” and mandated “a plan to resettle disfavored minorities in South Africa discriminated against because of their race as refugees” into the United States. He has promised them a rapid pathway to citizenship.

South Africa rejected these accusations, with the country’s Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola saying there is no arbitrary dispossession of land or private property with South Africa’s new land reform law. “This law is similar to the Eminent domain laws,” Lamola explained, which allow countries to expropriate private property for public use.

The issue of land is a highly emotive one in a country where historically, racist laws saw Black families forcibly removed from their land. Three decades after the collapse of South Africa’s white minority government in 1994, land ownership remains a contentious issue, with most farm property in the country still owned by whites. 

They make up a little more than seven percent of the population but own farmland that covers the majority of the country’s territory. Many Black South Africans have argued that Nelson Mandela and other leaders did not do enough to force the white minority to give up wealth that had been accrued during apartheid.

In 1996, the South African government launched its land reform programme, promising to settle all claims for redistribution by 2005 and to redistribute 30 per cent of white-owned commercial agricultural land to black South Africans by 2014. The fact neither target has been met helps explain the pressure for the current legislation.

Originally introduced as a bill in 2020, the law was intended as a mechanism to review the apartheid-era Expropriation Act of 1975 and align it with the current constitution.

Ramaphosa came out in defence of his country during a national address Feb 6, asserting that South Africa would not be bullied. “We will speak with one voice in defence of our national interest, our sovereignty and our constitutional democracy.” He described the bill as a “constitutionally mandated legal process that ensures public access to land in an equitable and just manner as guided by the constitution.”

But, he added, beyond providing assistance for South Africa’s PEPFAR anti-HIV/AIDS initiative, “there is no other significant funding that is provided by the United States in South Africa.” South Africa received more than $400 million in aid from the United States in 2023, almost all of which went to funding efforts to fight HIV and AIDS. The government has said that American funding makes up about 17 per cent of its budget for battling HIV.

Elon Musk, the billionaire who has become a close adviser to Trump, is from South Africa. In 2023, Musk posted similar claims about South Africa on X, the social media platform he owns. “They are openly pushing for genocide of white people in South Africa,” he wrote.

Ernst Roets, the executive director of the Afrikaner Foundation and the author of Kill the Boer: Government Complicity in South Africa’s Brutal Farm Murders, said that while the government was not seizing land, it was trying to create a legal and policy framework to be able to do so. But even his group has not called on Trump to broadly cut aid to South Africa, but instead seek targeted actions against government leaders, some of whom have been involved in attacks on white farmers.

In his book Roets make the case that agents of the South African government, such as law enforcement officers, are either not willing to stop the farm attackers or actively assisting the brutal murderers.

A former American diplomat who served in South Africa for a few years believes Trump is going to do everything in his power to undermine South Africa’s chairmanship of the influential G20 club of countries.

All of this has come to the fore as the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA), a trade deal under which the U.S. gives preferential access to its markets to certain African countries, expires in September. It is worth about $14.7 billion a year in South Africa’s trade with the U.S. and there is a risk that it will not be renewed.

 

Ambassadors of Nordic countries discuss Arctic defence

  By Henry Srebrnik, [Sydney, N.S.] Cape Breton Post

A recent panel on “Climate Change and Transnational Security,” organized by the Institute of Island Studies at UPEI, hosted the representatives of the five Nordic countries to Canada, as part of a New Brunswick-P.E.I. tour recently.

Three of these nations – Demark, Finland, and Sweden – are members of both the European Union and NATO, while Iceland and Norway belong only to NATO.

Of especial concern to Denmark and Iceland are the recent statements by U.S. President Donald Trump indicating he would like to “buy” Greenland, currently a Danish possession. Denmark also rules the Faroe Islands northwest of Britain.  Nearby Iceland would also be affected.

Regarding Trump’s declarations, Danish Ambassador Nikolaj Harris told the audience that this was not some idle threat: “we are taking it very seriously.” Nonetheless, he said, it is a non-starter. The Danish government announced a huge boost in defence spending for Greenland after Trump repeated his desire to purchase the Arctic territory. Danish Defence Minister Troels Lund Poulsen said the package was at least $1.5 billion.

Harris pointed out that the 57,000 indigenous inhabitants of Greenland, who call themselves Kalaallit, an Inuit ethnic group, have a great deal of internal self-government and would need to be taken into account in any deals regarding their island.

But Harris also added that Denmark is willing to engage with the U.S. over its legitimate concerns regarding the defence of the Arctic region against a potential enemy, particularly Russia. Washington already has military assets in Greenland and seems to have had no issue with this before Trump took office, he noted.

In 1917, Denmark sold the Danish West Indies in the Caribbean Sea to the United States; the islands are now known as the U.S. Virgin Islands. Could Trump have got the idea of buying Greenland from this earlier American acquisition?  

In 1949, Denmark became one of the charter members of NATO. It hosts Pituffik Space Force Base in Greenland, which provides great strategic value for U.S. and NATO military forces. Since the 1950s, Pittufik has enabled space superiority and provided a critical early-warning radar system that improves U.S. and NATO military capabilities in the Arctic region. 

The Faroe Islands and Greenland are semi-autonomous regions within the Kingdom of Denmark, and the United States has a strong relationship with both, including regular dialogues on commercial, scientific, and cultural cooperation. The U.S. Consulate in Nuuk, Greenland, reopened on June 10, 2020, after the first U.S. Consulate there closed in 1953.

Hlynur Gudjonsson, Iceland’s ambassador in Ottawa, mentioned that the United States had occupied his country during the Second World War, to defend it against Nazi Germany. In July 1940 Iceland’s representative in the U.S., Vilhjalmur Thor, asked the State Department whether Iceland could be placed under U.S. protection in accordance with the Monroe Doctrine, the long-standing U.S. policy asserting a U.S. role in protecting the Western Hemisphere from aggression. 

Iceland became important to the United States during the Cold War period. This was strengthened by Iceland’s agreement with the U.S. on the Keflavik Naval Air Station in 1946, with Iceland being a founding member of NATO in 1949, and with the conclusion of the Bilateral Defense Agreement between Iceland and the U.S. in 1951.

The agreement remains in force, although U.S. military forces are no longer permanently stationed there. The Americans kept Keflavik base on the island until 2006, when they left voluntarily.

The Arctic, encircled by Russia and seven NATO members -- the U.S., Canada and the five Nordic countries -- has drawn increasing attention in recent years as melting ice from climate change opens up shipping lanes and the possibility to explore for potential energy and mineral resources.

Is it possible, someone suggested, that Trump does not trust Canada to defend the Arctic? All five diplomats stressed that NATO could be relied upon to maintain the political integrity of the North Atlantic. Following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, longtime neutral countries Finland and Sweden joined the alliance. Along with Norway, Finland has a land border with Russia – in the latter’s case, 1,340 kilometres. They all remain vigilant.

 

Iran Continues to Gain Influence in Africa

   By Henry Srebrnik, [Fredericton, NB] Daily Gleaner

Since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, the Islamic Republic of Iran’s interest in Africa has evolved. Iran has been expanding its footprint on the continent, offering arms and partnerships as it works to boost its influence there.

Iran saw an ideological kinship between itself and many African countries due to their shared desire to fight against the “foreign Western occupier.’’ Tehran also sought to exploit the continent’s resources for its own needs. These reasons, along with Africa’s geographical proximity to the Middle East, made Africa particularly attractive to the Iranian leadership.

Iran hopes to build partnerships that will help it bypass international sanctions while carving out new ground for its “axis of resistance’’ against its global and regional adversaries. Iran’s engagement in Africa is marked by efforts to export Tehran’s version of political Islam, the establishment of proxies, and weapons supplies to both states and nonstate actors.

Iran uses religious soft power to extend its influence in Africa. Tehran organizes conferences, religious and political events, and collaborates with local partners. More than a hundred Islamic centers, schools, seminaries, and mosques are present in over thirty African countries. Al-Mustafa International University, founded in 2007, trains religious scholars and missionaries, thereby increasing Shiite influence on the continent. Since its inception, more than 45,000 religious scholars have graduated.

Other key institutions include the Mostazafan Foundation, the Iranian Red Crescent, the Ministry of Islamic Guidance and Culture, and the Organization of Culture and Islamic Communication. In addition to these institutions, parliamentary groups, friendship associations, chambers of commerce, charitable organizations, religious seminaries, and universities are involved.

Iranian officials have lauded the potential to gain access to Africa’s agricultural and mineral wealth while finding new destinations for Iranian exports, including sophisticated weapons.

In August 2022, Foreign Minister Hossein Amir Abdollahian visited Mali and Tanzania, then South Africa in 2023. President Ebrahim Raisi, underscoring the importance of the strategy, made a three-country tour to Africa in July 2023 -- the first by an Iranian president to the continent in more than a decade. While in Uganda, Zimbabwe, and Kenya, he “praised the resistance of African countries against colonization as a symbol of their awakening and vigilance.’’ These visits were accompanied by the signing of numerous agreements in the industrial, energy, agricultural, pharmaceutical, and telecommunications sectors.

Geopolitically, Kenya, Uganda, and Zimbabwe have been of assistance to Iran. They have held seats and memberships in important multilateral institutions including the UN Security Council, the UN General Assembly, and the International Atomic Energy Agency’s Board of Governors. As such, they have occasionally been able to tone down pivotal votes, resolutions, and sanctions against Iran’s nuclear program and human rights record.. Furthermore, Uganda and Zimbabwe produce and export uranium, the chief resource for Iran’s nuclear program.

 Iran also seized the opportunity to reach out to a trio of anti-Western military juntas that have taken power in Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger. Weapons sales could address their needs while aligning with their anti-Western and aggressively militarized outlooks.

Ali Bagheri Kani, a senior diplomat and now foreign minister, visited Niger and Burkina Faso in January 2023. Raisi praised “the resistance of these African countries’’ in the face of “hegemonic European policies and colonialism.’’ When Nigerien Prime Minister Ali Lamine Zeine came to Tehran in January 2024, Raisi said Niger has a “brilliant future’’ and lauded the West African country’s “path of independence and freedom.’’

With Tehran’s strained relations with rival Saudi Arabia restored in early 2023, normalized ties with Horn of Africa countries followed. Iran reestablished relations with Djibouti, which had cut ties with Iran at Riyadh’s urging. Tehran also worked to patch things up with Eritrea and Sudan, which fell out with Iran after joining a Saudi-led coalition against the Houthis in Yemen.

Iranian weapons sales to Sudan’s armed forces, which are fighting a civil war against rebels, have recently allowed the military to reverse losses and regain territory. Iran began sending drones to the Sudanese army in early 2024 and unsuccessfully attempted to obtain a permanent naval base in Sudan in exchange for a helicopter-carrying ship. An Iranian naval base at Port Sudan would directly support Iranian naval operations.

Deepening ties with the Sudanese army, the desire to strengthen diplomatic relations with Egypt, and renewing diplomatic relations with Djibouti, with its strategic location near the Bab el-Mandeb Strait, will allow Iran to increase its security presence in this strategic region. This move serves several important objectives from an Iranian perspective, including increasing the “economic siege’’ on Israel, possibly rebuilding channels for transferring weapons to Hamas in the Gaza Strip, and enhancing its ability to project naval power in this region.

Iranian authorities are gradually carving out a new area of influence across the African continent, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and, even more so, in West Africa and the countries of the Great Rift Valley. The head of the Iran-Africa Joint Chamber of Commerce, Masoud Berahman, at a conference on Iran-Africa trade opportunities in the city of Zanjan last August, called for strategic planning to enhance Iran’s trade relations with the continent, which currently stand at about $1.3 billion.

Iran’s growing influence in Africa is multifaceted, combining active diplomacy, religious soft power, and economic expansion. This strategy allows Iran to strengthen its geopolitical positions while gaining valuable allies on the African continent.