Durban - US President Donald Trump has ordered his Secretary of State, Mike Pompeo to study the ANC's decision to seize privately owned farmland without compensation and look into what he calls the "large-scale" murder of farmers.
In a tweet early on Thursday, Trump said that he had tasked Pompeo to study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriation and the "large-scale killing of farmers".
I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. “South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.” @TuckerCarlson @FoxNews
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 23, 2018
Trump, who is a prolific Twitter user tagged Fox News host, Tucker Carlson in his tweet, presumably after watching a segment on the show about South Africa's intention to seize farmland.
The tweet comes just hours after a heated debate in parliament about land expropriation between President Cyril Ramaphosa and various political parties over the decision to amend section 25 of the Constitution.
Rampahosa told Parliament on Wednesday that the debate on land expropriation had run its course and opponents of the policy should accept it as the only way to prevent South Africa from sliding into political instability.
"This thing is very important.... If you don't want stability then don't transform," Ramaphosa told the National Assembly in response to a supplementary question from Pieter Groenewald from the Freedom Front Plus.
The topic dominated presidential question time in the chamber, with Ramaphosa signalling in response to questions from the Democratic Alliance and Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) that the government was determined to amend section 25 of the Constitution to clearly define the circumstances in which expropriation without compensation was allowed and to apply it to rural and urban land.
The ANC has promised that government will not nationalise land – but plans to give ownership of the land directly to dispossessed black people.