Ramaphosa Takes Aim At Trump: No Race Or Culture Is Being Persecuted In Sa

President Cyril Ramaphosa has once again dismissed claims of persecution in South Africa, seemingly in response to United States US President Donald Trumps repeated comments.

Writing in his weekly newsletter on Monday 24 March, Ramaphosa urged South Africans to reject the politics of divisiveness that is emerging in many parts of the world.

In particular, we should challenge the completely false narrative that our country is a place in which people of a certain race or culture are being targeted for persecution, he added.

We should not allow events beyond our shores to divide us or turn us against each other.

In February, Trump signed an executive order cutting US aid to South Africa, claiming the Expropriation Act would enable the government to seize ethnic minority Afrikaners' agricultural property without compensation.

This Act follows countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fuelling disproportionate violence against racially disfavoured landowners, he further claimed, falsely.

He also announced a policy to resettle Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation.

Ramaphosa said all South African citizens enjoy equal rights and freedoms.

In South Africa today, there are constitutional protections guaranteed to all racial, cultural and linguistic groups, including their right to enjoy their culture and to use their language, he added.

Since the end of apartheid our country has been recognised globally for upholding human rights. The free flow of ideas and opinions are vital to democracy and to having a vibrant society.