Trump cuts US aid to South Africa over land restitution law

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00:00The repercussions of President Donald Trump's decision to stop USAID to South Africa are being described as catastrophic.

00:08Experts at a South African HIV research center say it's destroyed the US's credibility.

00:13South Africa has the highest absolute number of people living with HIV in the world and American dollars help them fight the condition.

00:21We had two studies that were funded by USAID.

00:25One of them was a vaccine trial and that trial hadn't started yet, so we just

00:31put a halt on it. The second trial is one that was developing a new technology to help women protect themselves from HIV.

00:41We are not spending any US government money because they don't care about

00:46these women in the trial, but we care and so we will spend our own resources on doing that.

00:52The freeze is in response to South Africa's new

00:55expropriation act. It allows the government to take and redistribute land in specific instances

01:01if it's not being used or in the public interest. It aims to fix the injustices of apartheid, which was a system of

01:08institutionalized racial segregation and discrimination imposed by the white minority rulers against non-white people.

01:15The law has been referenced recently by Trump ally and advisor Elon Musk.

01:19He himself is South African born and grew up under the system.

01:23The White House argues that the new policy is racist against white people.

01:28This act follows countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment,

01:35education and business and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners.

01:45Earlier in the week South Africa's president said they had not confiscated any land

01:49and that his country will not be bullied.

01:52President Saul Ramaphosa said his government would look at ways to fill the gap left without US funding.

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