South African government says US order a 'campaign of misinformation'

The South African government on Saturday said US President Donald Trump's latest executive order "seems to be a campaign of misinformation and propaganda" against the nation.

"It is of great concern that the foundational premise of this order lacks factual accuracy and fails to recognise South Africa's profound and painful history of colonialism and apartheid," read the statement from the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO).

On Friday, Trump announced the US would be freezing aid to South Africa citing a new law allowing land to be expropriated if deemed to be in the public interest.

Trump accused the government in Pretoria of "unjust and immoral practices" and instructed all US government agencies to "halt foreign aid or assistance" for South Africa until it ends such practices.

The order also said that Washington would promote the resettlement of "Afrikaner refugees escaping government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation."

DIRCO said it was ironic that the order makes provision for refugee status for a group of South Africans "that remains amongst the most economically privileged, while vulnerable people in the US from other parts of the world are being deported and denied asylum despite real hardship."

South Africa recently passed a law allowing the expropriation of land in the public interest to rectify injustices committed during the racist system of apartheid from 1948 to 1994.

At that time, land was systematically and unfairly distributed along ethnic lines, primarily to white South Africans.

The law provides for compensation payments for landowners. Expropriations may only take place if previous purchase negotiations have been unsuccessful.

Advocacy groups for South Africa's Afrikaner community on Saturday said its members do not want to leave the country.

"We don't want to move elsewhere; we are not going to ask our children to move to another country," said Kallie Kriel, chief executive of the AfriForum non-governmental organization, which represents the white Afrikaans-speaking community.

Kriel said he would engage with both the South African and US governments in order to find solutions to Afrikaners' issues.

The press conference was held by AfriForum and trade union Solidarity in reaction to Trump's executive order.

White South Africans - who make up less than 10% of the population - still own the majority of the country's private land, more than 30 years after the end of the apartheid regime.