On September 15, 2026, Secretary of State Marco Rubio announced a visa restriction policy aimed at South Africa. “The South African government has not adequately addressed the previously laid out concerns and so today, I am announcing a new visa restriction policy under Section 212(a)(3)(C) of the Immigration and Nationality Act,” the statement said. It covers foreign nationals “responsible for, or complicit in, the enactment or implementation of laws or policies that enable uncompensated land seizures, race-based discrimination, and/or the incitement of imminent violence against members of minority ethnic or racial groups in South Africa,” and certain family members. It named no one, and it cites Trump's executive order on “Egregious Actions of the Republic of South Africa.”
Rubio wrote on X that South Africa's government is “destroying its economy through an obsessive pursuit of racial grievance against the Afrikaner minority.” U.S. Ambassador Leo Brent Bozell III said the policy “is only the first step in a series of escalatory measures that will show America's firm resolve in this matter.” Daily Maverick, citing diplomatic sources, reported no list of those targeted would be published.
The policy rests on claims about the treatment of white South Africans that the evidence does not support. The Guardian reported “There is no large-scale expropriation of land” under South Africa's expropriation law, which allows expropriation without compensation only in limited circumstances, and the BBC reported that “South Africa's latest crime statistics do not indicate that white people are at a greater risk of violent crime than other racial groups.” South Africa's foreign ministry said the announcement “aligns with the mischaracterisation of South Africa's domestic policies by fringe groups” and that “It is our sovereign right to put in place laws that address the nation's concern over centuries of racial injustice.”
The restrictions follow earlier steps against South Africa: cuts to aid, a refugee program for Afrikaners, and 30 percent tariffs, which the BBC described as the highest rate in sub-Saharan Africa.