US President Donald Trump on Friday announced that no US government official would attend the upcoming G20 Summit in South Africa later this month over purported “human rights abuses.”“Afrikaners (People who are descended from Dutch settlers and also French and German immigrants) are being killed and slaughtered, and their land and farms are being illegally confiscated,” Trump wrote in a post on social media. “No U.S. Government Official will attend as long as these Human Rights abuses continue.”South Africa rebuffed Trump’s accusation and called his announcement “regrettable”. Here is what to know.First, who are Afrikaners?Afrikaners are white South Africans who have descended from mid-17th century Dutch settlers in the country, and speak a language called Afrikaans. They notably have significant rural landholding.And what are the “human rights abuses” Trump claims occurred?The alleged violence against white South Africans is not a new accusation, and dates back to Trump’s first term (2017-21) in the White House. In August 2018, after Fox News ran a segment on the South African government’s plan to redistribute land to black people who had been dispossessed during apartheid, Trump tweeted about “farm seizures and expropriations and the large-scale killing of farmers” in that country.A fringe of conservative Afrikaners has long alleged a “genocide” and their ill-treatment by the post-Apartheid government. Elon Musk, a white South African by birth (but not an Afrikaner) and Trump’s ally until earlier this year, has also repeated these claims, accusing the SA government of having ‘racist’ land ownership laws. He has also accused President Cyril Ramaphosa in the past of not acting against the killings of white farmers.This February, Trump signed an executive order titled “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa”, days after accusing South Africa of “confiscating land, and treating certain classes of people VERY BADLY”. He called this a “massive Human Rights VIOLATION”, and promised to “cut off all future funding to South Africa” until the matter had been investigated. The order referred to purported injustices against the “ethnic minority Afrikaner” people.Story continues below this adIn May, Trump took this a step further, recognising Afrikaners as “refugees” and offering “asylum” to one such group. Amidst the wider immigration crackdown by the Trump administration, it sponsored a chartered flight to transport this group, and fast-tracked their visa applications, with a direct pathway to American citizenship and eligibility for government benefits.So, what was the legislation that drew the ire of both Trump and Musk?After five years of heated deliberation and public consultation, the South African government passed the Expropriation Act this January. It allows the state to seize land without compensation for public purposes or in the public interest in certain circumstances. The legislation effectively provides a legal framework for expropriation by the state under Section 25(2) of the South African constitution.This does not automatically mean that the South African government would unilaterally seize property from a farm owner or redistribute it at a whim. In most cases, the expropriating authority is required to negotiate with the property owner to reach an agreement on acquiring the property before resorting to expropriation. Ramaphosa described the Act as “a constitutionally mandated legal process that ensures public access to land in an equitable and just manner as guided by the constitution”.But why introduce such a law in the first place?Essentially, to correct the injustices of the Apartheid, as well as the heavily skewed nature of land ownership in South Africa.Story continues below this adThe Expropriation Act repealed and replaced the apartheid-era Expropriation Act of 1975, which obligated the state to pay owners to seize the lands under the principle of “willing seller, willing buyer” (WSWB), delaying the process of land distribution. This principle allowed landowners to sell to the highest bidder on the open market, effectively protecting their racial preferences.Edward Lahiff, an expert on southern Africa at the University of Cork in Ireland, noted that at the end of the Apartheid, marking the end of the rule of a racist minority over the country, about 86% of agricultural land was controlled by white people, who constituted 10.9% of the population. (‘‘Willing Buyer, Willing Seller’: South Africa’s failed experiment in market-led agrarian reform’, Third World Quarterly, 2007)Little has changed since then, with a 2017 land audit indicating that white South Africans continued to own a majority (72%) of all agricultural landholdings. They comprise only about 7% of South Africa’s 62 million population.Land reforms to address this situation, including the new Expropriation Act, are part of the South Africa National Development Plan 2030, which aims to eliminate poverty and reduce inequality by uniting South Africans.