The FW de Klerk Foundation has hit back at US president Donald Trump's attacks on South Africa, saying it’s cheap race politics.
Trump last week followed up his decision to cut aid to SA, by upgrading an offer to give white Afrikaner farmers refugee status in America to fast-tracked citizenship to all white farmers, who he says are being treated unfairly.
Christo van der Rheede, executive at the FW de Klerk Foundation said that Trump's actions are based on disinformation and lack any basis in truth.
Speaking to the SABC, Van der Rheede says: “The challenges we face in South Africa are not just limited to white people. All of us are affected by crime, unemployment and ill-conceived policies, especially economic ones.”
Van der Rheede said that Trump's rhetoric and executive orders are dangerous and based on cheap politics which will cause great harm to the South African economy and to the country's agricultural industry.
He adds: “It is part of an ethnic nationalist revival. We have seen it happening in the US, France, Hungary and many European states and the South African right wing has seen this as an opportunity to confront the non-racial democratic dispensation that was founded in 1994.”
He added that this is misaligned with what the country strives for. “If you read the Constitution, it says it belongs to all of the people that live in it. It talks a non-racial, non-sexist society, an accountable and responsive government and that is what we as South Africans should challenge.”