Diplomacy. The United States denounces “racial discrimination” in South Africa and announces visa restrictions

The administration of President Donald Trump announced on Tuesday the establishment of visa restrictions against South Africans responsible, according to Washington, for implementing “racial discrimination”, particularly against white Afrikaners. For months, the Trump government has unfoundedly accused the South African authorities of “persecution” against Afrikaners, descendants of European settlers, causing a serious deterioration in diplomatic relations between the two countries.

Access to American territory will now be restricted for “foreign nationals who are responsible for or complicit in the adoption or implementation of laws or policies allowing expropriations of land without compensation, discrimination based on race and/or incitement to imminent violence against members of ethnic or racial minorities in South Africa”, notes Marco Rubio, the head of American diplomacy, in a press release. The South African government is “wrecking its economy by engaging in a vengeful racial crusade against the Afrikaner minority,” he wrote on X.

Increase in customs duties

Since his return to power in 2025, Donald Trump has increased criticism against the Pretoria government, denouncing positive discrimination programs aimed at correcting inequalities inherited from colonization and then apartheid. In response, Washington decided to welcome thousands of Afrikaners as refugees to the United States and increase tariffs on imports from the country.

Afrikaners make up the majority of South Africa’s white population. It is from this segment of the population that the political leaders who established apartheid, a system of racial segregation that deprived the black population – the vast majority – of most of their rights from 1948 until the early 1990s came.