South Africa will defend sovereignty, ANC Chairman said in our tension

A senior figure from South Africa's ruling ANC defends the country's sovereignty as tensions grow with the United States and a new land law are becoming increasingly tense.

“We are a free country, we are a sovereign state. We are not a province of the United States and sovereignty will be defended,” ANC President Gwede Mantashe said on Sunday.

U.S. President Donald Trump has been hit on the new South African expropriation law and signed an executive order in February that it was a means by which the government could “take agricultural property of minority Africa Dutch without compensation.”

President Cyril Ramaphosa said the law ensures “a fair and just way to obtain public land.”

The expropriation law does allow the government to seize the land without compensation, but only in some cases.

Trump's February order was also recognized for Africans as refugees, calling them “a victim of injustice racial discrimination” and for the United States.

Mantashe stood in Ramaphosa during a speech at the South African Freedom Festival celebration in Mpumalanga, the eastern province, criticized South African citizens for calling on Trump to “punish” the country.

“Now they are told there are refugees to go there, and they refuse. They have to go,” he said.

Tensions also play publicly on Elon Musk's X page, where he describes his country's ownership law as “racist.”

Currently, despite the end of the racist system decades ago, white South Africans are currently the minority of the population, owning most of the country’s private land and wealth.

To calm the rumbling tensions for months, South Africa appointed special envoys to Washington earlier this month.

Ramaphosa said McEbisi Jonas's mission is to advance the country's “diplomatic, trade and bilateral priorities”.

The move comes after Washington expelled South African ambassador Ebrahim Rasool, who accused Trump of “dog whistle” politics.

Last month, officials in Orania, an all-white separatist town established by the Dutch in South Korea after the end of apartheid, visited the United States as part of its recognition from the autonomous country.

In his speech on Sunday, Mantashe suggested that he would seek to integrate the community into Orania.

“Blacks have to go there to build, and we mix them together,” he said.

He added: “Hate can never survive in peace. Building a nation is peace”.