Musk and Afrikaners Cloud the Trump-Ramaphosa Meeting Agenda

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00:00It's become a very divisive issue in South Africa because earlier this year President

00:03Trump said that South Africa was seizing the land of white farmers, predominantly Afrikaners,

00:09without compensation.

00:11And there was a genocide against them because there is a problem with murders on farms here

00:14because South Africa has a high crime rate.

00:16Now, that's been quite widely ridiculed in South Africa and also elsewhere because Afrikaners

00:21are some of the richest people in South Africa, five of the seven billionaires are Afrikaners,

00:26many CEOs are Afrikaners, and there are many rich farmers.

00:31And at the same time, he's been slashing aid for HIV programs in South Africa and aid and

00:38humanitarian assistance around the continent, which mostly benefits black Africans.

00:42So it's caused a lot of divisiveness, both in South Africa and elsewhere.

00:47And it's created a huge problem for South African government, which is trying to maintain its

00:51relations or repair its relations with the US at the same time as dismissing these allegations

00:56sanctions.

00:57And I don't know what your take was on the Musk interview at the Qatar Economic Forum.

01:03We've just been hearing some of it, Anthony, and it really was tense, especially when it

01:07turned to South Africa.

01:10How much is the government's plan to offer Musk this workaround of the black ownership laws

01:15for Starlink likely to actually ease tensions with Donald Trump?

01:20And really, it's not going to be more than a Band-Aid.

01:25First of all, we don't know that Trump will accept the offer.

01:27Our reporting shows that an offer will be made to give him some sort of exemption from black

01:32economic empowerment rules or black ownership rules.

01:35But those are really available to all foreign investors, basically involves training or investment

01:40in local communities or all sorts of things.

01:42He has been offered that before.

01:43I presume a more concrete offer would now be made.

01:47But that's just for Elon Musk, who is an ally of Donald Trump.

01:50But the broader issue the Trump administration has with South Africa's affirmative action on

01:56black economic empowerment laws is that it sees him as DEI, which it opposes, and as a disadvantage

02:02to American investment.

02:05We can't really see the South African government rolling those back because they're pretty important

02:09to the black majority in South Africa, given the history under apartheid.

02:13And it's been a central plank of the ANC's policy since it took power in 1994.

02:18Thank you for.