US curbs SA visas, alleging ‘race-based discrimination’

The United States on Tuesday announced new restrictions on visas for South Africans, after President Donald Trump repeatedly criticised the country’s leaders over its post-apartheid racial justice policies.

Trump has lambasted South Africa’s land and employment laws that are meant to redress stark inequalities that black people still face 30 years after the end of white-minority rule.

In 2025, he berated President Cyril Ramaphosa in the Oval Office over discredited claims of a “white genocide” in South Africa. He has also hit the country with high tariffs and boycotted a G20 summit in Johannesburg.

“As President Trump has made clear, the South African people are being failed by a government that is destroying its economy through an obsessive pursuit of racial grievance against the Afrikaner minority,” US Secretary of State Marco Rubio said.