Dutch farmers in South Africa live in fear

pretoria - On Wednesday night in the US, Trump twittered that he had asked Foreign Affairs Minister Pompeo to study carefully the 'land and farm expropriation' and the 'large-scale murder of farmers' in South Africa. He responded to a broadcast by Fox News, in which the intention of the South African president Cyril Ramaphosa was discussed to change the constitution to simplify the expropriation of farms.

Although there is much to be said about the information presented to Fox News by a lobby of white farmers as facts, two prominent Dutch farmers in South Africa say that they fully share Trump's concerns.

'I'm afraid of this to some extent,' says Job Legemaat, who built the continent's first fully automatic milking parlor in the east of South Africa. 'Land reclamation without compensation is simply theft. I'm getting a bit nervous about it. On the other hand, they have been over for 25 years. '

As a result of colonialism and the racist apartheid regime, the vast majority of rural areas are owned by white farmers. Plans to do something about this with a sales program have failed and the situation has led to growing tensions among the black population, who also believe they are entitled to land.

'It is certainly worrisome,' says Joost van den Bosch, who, like Legemaat, has a Dutch passport and speaks Dutch, but was born in South Africa. 'But I think that in addition to the farmers, banks and insurance companies will also revolt if there is really going to be expropriated without compensation'.