Secretary of State Marco Rubio on Tuesday announced visa restrictions for South Africa due to “laws or policies that enable uncompensated land seizures, race-based discrimination, and/or the incitement of imminent violence against members of minority ethnic or racial groups.”
Rubio said the restrictions were necessary because “the South African government has not adequately addressed the previously laid out concerns.”
“The United States will not allow such behavior to go unchecked. These actions directly undermine peace, economic stability, and the rule of law, and they are incompatible with the pillars of America’s foreign policy,” he said.
“We once again strongly urge the South African government to quickly address these egregious actions,” he added.
Secretary of State Marco Rubio delivers remarks to members of the media in the James S. Brady Press Briefing Room, Tuesday, May 5, 2026. (Official White House Photo by Molly Riley)
Rubio referred to President Donald Trump’s February 2025 executive order, “addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa,” which criticized the South African government for discriminatory policies against the white Afrikaner minority, especially the expropriation of land.
The executive order also slammed South Africa for “policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.”
Rubio said on Tuesday that the administration “remains gravely concerned about racially motivated crime and government-sponsored discrimination occurring against the Afrikaners and other minority populations in South Africa.”
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Business Insider Africa noted on Wednesday that Rubio’s announcement “did not name anyone affected by the measure, identify the South African laws that would automatically trigger restrictions or disclose whether officials already holding U.S. visas could lose them.”
This made Rubio’s statement seem more like a “framework for future visa action,” rather than a rollout of immediate sanctions against particular South African officials.
“It is also not a general restriction on South African travellers. Ordinary citizens remain eligible to apply for U.S. visas unless they fall within the conduct described by Washington or are affected by existing immigration rules,” Business Insider Africa added.
In a social media post on Tuesday, Rubio said South Africans have been “failed by a government that is destroying its economy through an obsessive pursuit of racial grievance against the Afrikaner minority.”
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“The South African government has consistently failed to adequately address rural crime, violent and dehumanizing rhetoric, and race-based discriminatory policies against Afrikaners and other minority populations,” he said.
South African Foreign Minister Ronald Lamola said on Wednesday that Rubio’s announcement “aligns with the mischaracterization of South Africa’s domestic policies by fringe groups who wrongly portray themselves as representatives of ‘minorities’ and Afrikaners in general.”
The administration of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa issued a statement on Wednesday asserting a “sovereign right to put in place laws that address the nation’s concern over centuries of racial injustice.”
Ramaphosa and his officials usually deny that they harbor any plans to impose racially discriminatory policies, so this statement implicitly concedes that they do have such an agenda, which they plan to defend as a justifiable response to “centuries of racial injustice.”
White South Africans own a great deal of the privately held farmland in South Africa. The exact percentage is a matter of dispute, and it is lower than it was at the end of apartheid in 1994, but it remains considerably higher than the 7-8 percent of the South African population that is white. If the government intends to “fix” this discrepancy, it will have to either purchase or seize land from white farmers and the number of them willing to sell their land at government prices has dwindled.
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Ramaphosa signed an expropriations bill in 2025 that explicitly gives his government the power to seize land without compensation, when it is “just and equitable and in the public interest.” Both American and South African critics of the law do not trust that rather expansive definition to protect landowners from predatory seizures. Meanwhile, the South African Marxist Left is frustrated by Ramaphosa’s reluctance to start seizing and redistributing property on a massive scale.
The U.S. embassy in Pretoria hinted that the Trump administration is gearing up for a response to impending South African actions.
“As has been made absolutely clear, the time for endless “dialogue” has run its course. No more. America has just so much patience,” U.S. Ambassador to South Africa L. Brent Bozell said in a social media post on Wednesday.
“We want strong, and lasting relations with the South African government. It needs to show it wants the same. So far it has shown it cares for neither,” he said.
“As a result, the consequences, as I’ve attempted time and again to express, are necessarily going to be severe. This visa restriction policy is only the first step in a series of escalatory measures that will show America’s firm resolve in this matter,” Bozell warned.