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The Justice and Peace Commission of the Southern African Catholic Bishops’ Conference (SACBC) has called for “racial reconciliation” in response to ongoing land reform disputes causing tension between South Africa and the United States government, reports Catholics News Agency.
In early February, South Africa President Cyril Ramaphosa reportedly signed the Expropriation Act into law, permitting the government there to seize land without compensation.
This policy aims to address historical land disparities favouring the country’s white minority.
President Donald Trump criticized the move, stating: “South Africa is confiscating land and treating certain classes of people very badly.”
In response, he issued an executive order suspending all aid to South Africa, citing concerns over alleged discrimination against white Afrikaners.
In an interview with the SACBC communication office, the director of the SACBC Justice and Peace Commission, Father Stan Muyebe, OP, said the recent dispute between the two governments has reopened the wounds of land injustices during the apartheid era in the southern African nation.
He said that South Africa was still trying to recover from its “painful past of apartheid, painful history for a lot of people.”
The development in South Africa concerning land, he said, “is a very complex and very sensitive issue that calls for genuine reconciliation.”
“Racial reconciliation in South Africa cannot be comprehensive if the land matter is not handled properly,” Muyebe said in a February 17, 2025 interview.
He decried what he described as the “manufacturing of facts and misrepresentation” surrounding South Africa’s post-apartheid land reform, calling it a highly sensitive issue that has been “unfortunately exploited by recent developments in global geopolitics.”
“Hearing what has been presented by the United States, but also in the media, there are some aspects that are facts, but there’s also manufacturing of facts, misrepresentation,” he said.
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