Rubio adds visa curbs on South Africans tied to land and race laws

Secretary of State Marco Rubio on 15 September announced a new US visa restriction aimed at foreign nationals he says are responsible for, or complicit in, laws and policies in South Africa that enable uncompensated land seizures, race-based discrimination or the incitement of imminent violence against minority ethnic or racial groups. The legal hook is Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act.

Rubio tied the step to President Donald Trump’s Executive Order 14204, “Addressing Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa.” The order recorded Washington’s view that Afrikaners and other minorities face racially motivated crime, race-based legislation, threats of expropriation without compensation, and chants that dehumanise them. “The South African government has not adequately addressed the previously laid out concerns,” Rubio said. “The United States will not allow such behavior to go unchecked.”

The announcement names a category, not a published list. It was not clear on 16 September which ministers, lawmakers, officials or private citizens would be refused a visa. The US ambassador in Pretoria wrote on X that the curbs were “only the first step in a series of escalatory measures.” The embassy said dialogue had run its course.

South Africa’s foreign ministry answered on 16 September. It said it had noted the restrictions “with concern” and that the US statement aligned with “the mischaracterisation of South Africa’s domestic policies by fringe groups.” Pretoria said problems in the relationship “can only be resolved by constructive engagement through state actors on both sides of the diplomatic channel not unilateral acts.” The government’s standing position is that there is no campaign of persecution against white South Africans, that land reform is a response to the property map left by apartheid, and that claims of white racial superiority are themselves a threat to the post-1994 settlement.

The quarrel is older than this week. In February 2025 Trump ordered the US government to resettle Afrikaners as refugees, citing alleged persecution. Washington has also objected to South Africa’s case against Israel at the International Court of Justice. Those files now sit next to a visa tool that can be applied person by person without a new statute.

Section 212(a)(3)(C) is a foreign-policy exclusion. Consular officers can refuse a visa if they judge a person’s entry would have serious adverse foreign-policy consequences. Used this way, it turns a bilateral argument about land and race law into a travel ban on unnamed officials. South Africa has not said whether it will answer in kind. The immediate effect is a colder channel between Pretoria and Washington and a list, still unpublished, of people who will find a US visa harder to get.