Trump freezes aid to South Africa, citing law to ‘seize’ land
The move is the latest in a blizzard of new orders escalating the US President’s campaign to crack down on US foreign aid.
US President Donald Trump has frozen US aid to South Africa, where his top donor Elon Musk was born, citing a law in the country that he alleges allows farm land to be seized from white farmers, despite Johannesburg’s denials.
The law would “enable the government of South Africa to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation,” Trump said in the order on Friday which also cited foreign policy clashes between the two countries over the Middle East.
The move is the latest in a new series of rapid-fire power plays that include the 78-year-old billionaire revoking his predecessor Joe Biden’s security clearance, while also escalating his campaign to dismantle the US humanitarian agency charged with helping the world’s poorest and extending American influence around the globe.
“THE CORRUPTION IS AT LEVELS RARELY SEEN BEFORE. CLOSE IT DOWN!” Trump wrote on his Truth Social app as part of a drive that has triggered chaos in the agency’s global network and allegations of weakening American influence on the world stage.
In the three weeks since he began his new term, Trump has launched a crusade led by Musk, the world’s richest person, to downsize or dismantle swaths of the US government.
The most concentrated fire has been on the United States Agency for International Development, which distributes US humanitarian aid globally.
On Friday, Musk – who along with Trump has spread blatantly false information about USAID’s finances – reposted photos on social media of the agency’s signage being taken down from its Washington headquarters.
The Trump administration has already frozen foreign aid and ordered thousands of foreign-based staff to return to the United States, with reported impacts on the ground steadily growing.
On Thursday, a union official confirmed reports that the USAID headcount of 10,000 employees would be reduced to around only 300.
Labor unions are challenging the legality of the onslaught, including a separate government-wide offer of buyouts by Musk’s team.
Democrats in Congress say it would be unconstitutional for Trump – who has also expressed intent to close the Department of Education – to shut down government agencies without the legislature’s greenlight.
Soft power
The United States’ current budget allocates about $US70 billion (about $112bn) for international assistance.
However while Washington is the biggest aid donor in the world, the money has only amounted to between 0.7 and 1.4 per cent of total US government spending in the last quarter century, according to the Pew Research Center.
USAID runs health and emergency programs in around 120 countries, including the world’s poorest regions.
It is seen as a vital source of soft power for the United States in its struggle for influence with rivals including China.
Samantha Power, the USAID chief under former president Biden, dubbed the agency “America’s superpower” in a scathing New York Times opinion piece Friday.
“We are witnessing one of the worst and most costly foreign policy blunders in US history,” said Power.
Unless the dismantling is halted, Power wrote, “future generations will marvel that it wasn’t China’s actions that eroded US standing and global security” but rather “an American president and the billionaire he unleashed to shoot first and aim later.” Hard-right Republicans and libertarians have long questioned the need for USAID and criticised what they say is wasteful spending abroad.
Those criticisms have been supercharged since Trump’s return with the administration demonising USAID employees and claiming, without evidence, that the aid agency is rife with fraud.
Racist social posts
Musk and his so-called Department of Government Efficiency, or DOGE, have rampaged through agencies that most Americans have for decades taken for granted or ignored.
While Democrats have struggled to find footing to halt the moves, court challenges are slowly taking shape.
An attempt by Trump to overturn the constitutional guarantee to birthright citizenship has been blocked by a judge, and on Thursday another judge paused the federal worker buyouts program, pending arguments on Monday.
Musk, the South African-born CEO of SpaceX and Tesla, ran into controversy last week with reports he and his team were accessing sensitive Treasury Department data and systems.
An internal assessment from the Treasury called the DOGE team’s access to federal payment systems “the single biggest insider threat the Bureau of the Fiscal Service has ever faced,” US media reported.
Adding to the drama, one member of the DOGE team resigned after it emerged that he had advocated racism and eugenics on social media.
On Friday, following backing for the sacked 25-year-old from Trump, Musk said he would reinstate the staffer.
The staffer, according to posts uncovered by the Wall Street Journal, said just last year that he was “racist before it was cool”.
Vice President JD Vance weighed in Friday saying he did not think “stupid social media activity should ruin a kid’s life,” while criticising the reporter for trying to “destroy people.” “So I say bring him back.”
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