Since the summer, the African National Congress government of South Africa, under president Cyril Ramaphosa, has been looking to make changes to their constitution to allow, the seizure of land without compensation. 

They plan to use these new powers to displace thousands of Afrikaner farmers in the Orange Free State and redistribute the land to the African majority. 

These land confiscations will devastate their agricultural sector. 

We in America have to do something about this before South African descends into chaos.

But things looked very different 25 years ago. 

South Africa was integrating its society socially and economically. 

According to “Trading Economics” the economy was growing at 4-6 percent per year. 

Nowadays, integration has stopped, growth is now anywhere from 2 percent to in the negatives. 

What is going on?

To understand the crisis that faces the diverse African Republic, we have to look at the historical backdrop for modern South Africa. 

The nation was under a severe institutional system of racial segregation for decades between the end of the second world war and 1991. 

This system favored the two white ethnic groups who were given voting rights and economic opportunity, the other groups were not. 

It was to the point where the average South African would almost never interact with someone outside of their group. 

This all came to an end as the last minority rule president, F. W. de Klerk, decided to roll back apartheid laws and open the elections to all races. 

The native African tribes were simultaneously revolting against the minority government and in conflict with one another. 

The future looked dark, and de Klerk correctly viewed ending apartheid as the only way to save South Africa from oblivion. 

The first multiracial election in South Africa resulted in the lawyer and civil rights icon, Nelson Mandela, winning by a landslide. 

He was carried by the black African vote but also received large numbers of votes from the white and mixed-race population because Mandela strongly supported a marginally popular idea with the African majority, the Rainbow Nation. 

Mandela believed that South Africa could only succeed and prosper as a nation if they left their racist roots behind. 

He recognized that instead of a nation consumed with tribal warfare, a nation united in its natural diversity is the path to prosperity for all. 

His presidency was marked with the complete restructuring of South African society. 

Mandela did everything in his power to oppose the radical wings of his African National Congress (ANC) who demanded a black ruled nation to replace a white ruled nation.

The ANC soon forgot Mandela’s message.

The black African nationalism became the dominant ideology within the ANC. 

They have been inspired by the genocidal maniac dictator of Zimbabwe, Robert Mugabe.

Zimbabwe also had its own, lighter form of apartheid ruled by its white British minority.

Mugabe, as soon as he won a civil war against the British minority, decided to expel or murder the British, which led to the complete polarization and collapse of Zimbabwean society into the nation it is today, among the poorest countries in the world.

The ANC, historically, argues that they are on land stolen from indigenous African tribes. 

But those farmers are descendants from a pioneer group called the Voortrekkers who fled from the British ruled Capetown to the African interior, in an area that was previously depopulated from Zulu and Bantu wars. 

They didn’t steal anyone’s land, and even if they had, it is absurd to punish people for the deeds of their ancestors. 

The situation could be summed up by Julius Malema of the far-left EFF party stating “I’m saying to you, we’ve not called for the killing of white people, at least for now.”

Unless we Americans do something to stop them, South Africa has no future other than racial conflict and national decline.

 Many, here in the U.S., are advocating for a stop to the land seizures, including President Donald Trump.

I would personally advocate for imposing tough economic sanctions on the country. 

The U.S. has an enormous sway economically everywhere on earth, and therefore restricting trade from and to any country has a devastating effect on their economy. 

It is the single most powerful, non-violent weapon for change that our country has in its arsenal. 

Countries respond to sanctions and often capitulate their goals to conditionally reopen trade. 

The ANC would likely backtrack their new racist policies in exchange for the prolonged gravy train that is trade with the US. 

We sanctioned South Africa during its old apartheid days and they cracked under the pressure, we should do the same with their new apartheid. 

Miles Streicek is a sophomore studying economics.