Last week, President Donald Trump signed an executive order stopping all aid to South Africa and offering refugee status to white South Africans.

The order decried “government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation” and accuses South Africa of a “shocking disregard of its citizens’ rights.” It specifically called for the resettlement of white Afrikaners, who are predominantly descendants of Dutch settlers and part of the country’s white minority.

Trump’s order focuses on a South African law, the Expropriation Act of 2024, which passed last month and allows the South African government to seize ethnic Afrikaners’ farm land without compensation when it is not being used, or when it would be in the public interest.

The act is meant to address inequalities that have plagued the country since colonial rule and enshrined under apartheid, a system of legalized racial segregation and discrimination, when Black residents were dispossessed of their land. Even though apartheid ended in the early 1990s, the inequalities persist. White South Africans make up about 7 percent of the country’s population — and own around 70 percent of the country’s private farmland.

Trump and his ally Elon Musk — himself born and raised in South Africa — have repeatedly accused the South African government of anti-white racism, a charge South African President Cyril Ramaphosa denies. Ramaphosa, Afrikaner rights groups, and critics of the land reform act have said that Trump’s order is based on misinformation and that private property rights are protected.

Cutting aid to South Africa would stop nearly half a billion dollars a year in funding, most of which pays for the world’s largest HIV/AIDS program. Today, Explained host Noel King spoke with Jonny Steinberg, a South African writer and senior lecturer on African politics at Yale, about why the Afrikaners have gained Trump’s attention.

Below is an excerpt of their conversation, edited for length and clarity. There’s much more in the full podcast, so listen to Today, Explained wherever you get your podcasts, including Apple Podcasts, Pandora, and Spotify.

Can you tell us what apartheid........

© Vox