Trump has repeatedly focused South Africa, together with baselessly claiming systemic persecution of white Afrikaners.
Published On 18 Dec 2025
The administration of US President Donald Trump has lobbed its newest salvo in opposition to the federal government in South Africa, accusing officers of harassing and doxxing workers working with white Afrikaners.
US Secretary of State Marco Rubio made the cost on Thursday, a day after South Africa expelled seven Kenyan nationals introduced into the nation with the assistance of the US to course of Afrikaner relocations.
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South Africa has maintained that people who entered the nation on vacationer visas are subsequently ineligible to work.
In an announcement, Rubio alleged that US nationals had additionally been briefly detained within the imbroglio, a transfer Washington “condemns within the strongest phrases”.
He added that officers’ passport info had been leaked, in what he referred to as “an unacceptable type of harassment” that risked placing the people “in hurt’s method”.
“Failure by the South African Government to carry these accountable accountable will end in extreme penalties,” he stated.
South Africa has stated no US officers have been arrested within the raid, which was not carried out at a diplomatic website. South Africa’s Department of International Relations and Cooperation stated the US using employees with the right documentation “raises severe questions on intent and diplomatic protocol”.
The Trump administration has for months heaped stress on the federal government of South African President Cyril Ramaphosa, claiming it tacitly helps the persecution of white Afrikaner farmers within the nation. The allegations had beforehand gained traction in far-right circles.
Ramaphosa has roundly rejected the claims, with high elected officers, together with Afrikaner leaders, decrying the allegations as misinformation at a raucous White House gathering in May.
Nevertheless, the Trump administration has continued to relocate members of the Afrikaner group by way of the US refugee programme.
That comes because the administration has staunched refugee admittances for practically all different nationalities, dropping admittances to a historic low of seven,500 for 2026, in what rights teams have decried as blatant racism.
The Trump administration has beforehand expelled South Africa’s ambassador to the US, boycotted the G20 summit in Johannesburg and excluded South Africa from attending the occasion subsequent yr in Miami.
