South Africa-Trump land row may move from aid to trade

12 hours ago Khanyisile Ngcobo BBC News, Johannesburg Getty Images South Africa appears to be at a crossroads in its waxing and waning relationship with the US following President Donald Trump’s controversial decision last week to cut financial aid to the country. Trump said South Africa was pursuing what he called “unjust and immoral practices” against the white minority Afrikaner community and by filing a genocide case against Israel in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in December 2023. His move has sent shockwaves across South Africa, with experts fearing he may go on to use this opportunity to end preferential access to the US market through its special US-Africa trade programme known as the Africa Growth and Opportunity Act (Agoa). The two countries have generally had friendly relations since the end of white-minority rule in 1994 when anti-apartheid icon and Nobel Peace Prize winner Nelson Mandela was elected South Africa’s first black president. Though it took the US another 14 years to remove Mandela from its “terrorist watch list” for his role in fighting the racist system of apartheid, which had been introduced by South Africa’s then-Afrikaner rulers in1948. AFP The latest tension flared up a few days after...