JOHN YANG: There's an escalating dispute between President Trump and South Africa over a new land policy that he says discriminates against the country's white minority.

On Truth Social yesterday, the president criticized what he called the terrible treatment of longtime farmers in the country and offered them a rapid pathway to U.S. citizenship.

And in February, Mr. Trump signed an executive order halting almost all foreign aid to South Africa because of what it called racially discriminatory property confiscation.

Ali Rogin spoke earlier with John Eligon.

He's the Johannesburg bureau chief for the New York Times.

ALI ROGIN: John, thank you so much for being with us.

First of all, tell us about this new land policy.

JOHN ELIGON, The New York Times: So essentially what the government has done is they've passed a law that allows the government to take land without providing compensation to the people they take it from.

Basically, the justification that the South African government gives for this is that we know through the long history of apartheid in South Africa that black people were essentially robbed of their land.

So, they are really looking at ways to sort of make right some of the inequalities that happen during apartheid.

ALI ROGIN: President Trump, in his executive order, referred specifically to white South Africans.

But then in a later social media post, he invited all farmers to consider the United States a place to come if they felt that they were being discriminated.

Do you think that shift in language was deliberate?

JOHN ELIGON: It's hard to say, as we've seen with many of the President's social media posts, that they're not always necessarily nuanced.

And race identity, culture is a very tricky thing across the world, especially in South Africa.

And now that he's brought in it to all farmers, the reality is that while most commercial farmers in South Africa are white, most farmers in South Africa are actually black.

What the President was thinking, whether he has made this distinction or his administration has made that distinction, I don't know.

But clearly in the initial order, it was not something that was meant for black farmers.

ALI ROGIN: And the reality that you laid out just now underscores the historical reality, which is that land ownership has historically been dominated by white South Africans.

We spoke to Yale University Professor Daniel Magaziner about this, and this is what he told us.

DANIEL MAGAZINER, Professor, Yale University: Historically, in fact, farmers have been quite oppressed in South Africa, but those are black farmers.

Those are the people whose land was alienated over centuries of colonization and who in many cases worked as really poorly remunerated menial laborers in horrific conditions on white owned farms.

And so in many ways, what he's doing is he is implicitly, not explicitly, but implicitly downplaying the reality of South African history.

ALI ROGIN: Is that what the South African government is saying President Trump is doing?

JOHN ELIGON: Essentially what they're saying is that he is flipping the narrative of what the true situation of South Africa is on its head.

So it's a very tricky thing because South Africa has always said that they want to build an inclusive rainbow nation.

So, yes, they want to work alongside the white farmers who've already existed, but they also want to, in some ways, find ways to uplift black farmers who have historically not had the same opportunities.

ALI ROGIN: The U.S. government has paused most aid to South Africa, citing this policy and also the nation's positions on the conflict between Israel and Hamas.

How are South Africans responding to that move by the United States?

JOHN ELIGON: I think South Africans, like many other people, across other countries in Africa are all very upset about the aid cuts.

Specifically in South Africa, most of that funding is for HIV and AIDS prevention treatment, those sorts of programs.

So the question is, when you cut off things like that, that will essentially could cost people their lives.

You know, people could are having difficulty accessing life safe medications.

So they feel like this is sort of a punitive measure that really gets at them for something that they didn't cause or they didn't do.

ALI ROGIN: And we've been looking at this largely through the prism of the United States and their actions against South Africa.

But how is this debate playing out inside the country?

JOHN ELIGON: So be clear, the land law is fairly controversial, right?

There is a real sense when you talk to white South Africans, particularly white farmers and white people living in rural areas, there is a sense of vulnerability in their lives.

There is a sense that, hey, you know, we're still being blamed for all the, for all what happened under apartheid and we're still be blamed for the troubles that happen now because of apartheid.

So it is very defensive because then on the other side, you do have the reality that a lot of black South Africans are still without any wealth, are still in very deep poverty and saying, hey, since the end of apartheid, those scales have not been equaled.

The injustices that happened that led us into poverty, that led us into generational poverty have not been corrected and the government has not done a good job of that.

So I think there's a lot of heat on the government as well.

There's a lot of tension all around.

ALI ROGIN: John Eligon, New York Times bureau chief in Johannesburg.

Thank you so much for joining us.

JOHN ELIGON: Thank you.