B-BBEE Commissioner Tshediso Matona: 'US backlash aims to restore white rule in South Africa'

Commissioner of the Broad-Based Black Economic Empowerment (B-BBEE) Commission Commission, Tshediso Matona said the current onslaught against South Africa by the United States is a ploy to reverse the gains made following the death of apartheid.

In January, IOL reported that in a significant development for land reform in South Africa, President Cyril Ramaphosa had officially signed the Expropriation Bill into law.

The landmark legislation was signed to address longstanding issues of land inequality and provide a framework for the expropriation of land without compensation.

In the aftermath, South Africa faced excessive backlash from the US government, with President Donald Trump unleashing a raft of sanctions including cutting financial aid to South Africa.

Speaking to broadcaster Newzroom Afrika on Tuesday, Matona said he views the backlash as an attempt to drag South Africa back to white minority rule.

“What is at stake with this backlash is fundamentally that … it is an attempt to overthrow the governance, the democratic governance of the Republic, expounded in our Constitution as the supreme law of the country,” he said.

“It is an attempt to return us to white supremacy rule where one race ruled over another. Ultimately, this is an attack on our Constitution, an attack on our sovereignty, about who we have chosen to be after 1994.

“It is said that we must heal our past divisions, we must establish a society based on social justice and that to promote this, laws and other measures to advance persons disadvantaged unfairly … we know who those persons are. We know who it is that was disadvantaged so we use laws and other measures, including preferential procurement,” said Matona.

He said the external pressure exerted on South Africa seems like an attempt to re-colonise the country.

On Monday, IOL reported that the Jacob Zuma-led uMkhonto weSizwe (MK) Party has opened a case of treason against AfriForum, accusing the lobby group of peddling false information about South Africa’s transformation and expropriation policies.

“As the MK party we are here, we came to open a case of treason against the AfriForum, based on what they have done,” deputy president of the MK party, John Hlophe, said speaking to journalists outside Cape Town central police station.

“You recall that there is an executive order which Donald Trump, the American president, has now issued against South Africa following the intervention that was made by AfriForum,” he said.

“We have just opened the criminal case against AfriForum because we want them to be questioned.”

Last week, IOL reported that US President Donald Trump has made good on his promise to cut funding to South Africa over the government’s land expropriation policy and resettle white farmers whose land will allegedly be expropriated.

In a late-night Executive Order on Friday, Trump accused South Africa’s government of “egregious actions” without providing any evidence, saying the recently enacted Expropriation Act 13 of 2024 would seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation.

Trump said this Act followed “countless government policies” designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against “racially disfavored landowners”.

In addition, he also accused South Africa of having taken aggressive positions towards the US and its allies, including accusing Israel, not Hamas, of genocide against Palestinians in the International Court of Justice, and reinvigorating its relations with Iran to develop commercial, military, and nuclear arrangements.

“The United States cannot support the government of South Africa’s commission of rights violations in its country or its undermining United States foreign policy, which poses national security threats to our Nation, our allies, our African partners, and our interests,” read the Order.

joinisayi.maromo@iol.co.za

IOL