 West is advocating against this move. He is the head of policy and action of AFRI Forum. That's a civil rights organization protecting the rights of white South Africans and other minorities. Ernst Roots joins us tonight from D.C. Ernst, thanks for being with us. Thank you, Michelle. It's good to be on the show. All right, Ernst, even though white South Africans were promised during the reconciliation process that there would not be expropriation without compensation, and that was in fact one of the reasons that a civil war was avoided, and this was indeed enshrined in the Constitution, South Africa's president from a posse says that this needs to happen to fix the apartheid legacy. White people make up just 9% of the population. They still own about 72% of the farmland that's held by individuals. And the ANC, the ruling party, says this land needs to be redistributed to address the past. What do you say to that? Well, I think there's several things to be said about that. It certainly is true that the negotiated settlement of 1994 is being breached now by the ruling party because that settlement agreement among others stated that minority rights would be protected in South Africa, and that property rights would be protected now. Down the line, they've decided that they want to break that agreement and basically take South Africa down the road of a socialist path. But we do also find that you mentioned some of the figures, and you quoted them correctly, although we frequently hear them quoted incorrectly by our government, where the claim is made that white people own 70% of the land in South Africa. The truth of the matter is that according to that report that is often quoted, white people own 70% of the 30% of land that is owned by individuals. In other words, it's about 20% of the surface of South Africa, while about a quarter of the surface of South Africa is already owned or controlled by government. But I think the important issue here to mention is that there's a lot of dishonesty in this process. This is not, and you can clearly see this by the statistics that's available, by developments up to date. This is not about redistributing land. This is not about correcting historical injustices. This is about nationalization of land. This is about the government taking property from people claiming that they want to redistribute it to the poor, but not redistributing it and having government control the land. It's the same type of thing that happened in Zimbabwe, although the only thing that they're saying is they want to do the same thing, but this time it's going to be without violence. That doesn't make sense because that is to say that I'm going to take your property from you without any compensation and you are not going to resist. And of course we know that's not realistic. So we are very concerned about the situation. And to be clear, the government is not going to pay the white farmers that they take the land away from anything at all, nothing whatsoever. Well, so currently there's this redistribution process where we had an example where, for example, there was this Akerland-Burdrow farm, it was a well-known example. They gave them a few days to vacate the farm and they said to them they will be compensated at 10% of market value. Of course the constitution hasn't been changed yet. They are now in the process of changing the constitution to empower the state to do exactly that, to say we can take your property if we think we should and we can then decide if you should receive any compensation at all. And there is, and I know there would be some people just to respond to the way you frame the question, would say, no, this is not a racial thing at all. It clearly is. If you listen to the comments made by government leaders, we've had cabinet ministers say black people in South Africa can rest assured that when government embarks on this process, no property of any black person will be touched. They will only take the property of the whites. We hear this coming from some of the most senior leaders in government. So we would have, I would have liked to say to you that this is not a race thing, but unfortunately it is a race thing for the South African government. All right, well, add to your point of how this policy destroyed Zimbabwe's economy. That same sentiment was echoed by Secretary of State Mike Pompeo, says it's going to destroy the economy for everyone. You're in DC pushing for more action from the US government. What would you like them to do? Yes, that's I think the important point. So we are here to speak to people in the US government and Capitol Hill and so forth. And one of the important things is I think the US should realize that this would be bad for South Africa. But there's also a bigger picture here. And part of the bigger picture is the role that the Chinese government is playing behind the scenes and how the Chinese government is benefiting from this policy and how the Chinese government is gaining more and more control over Africa as a continent as a result of these socialist policies. And that's something that I think that we believe the US should be very alarmed over. And I think also there's an opportunity for the United States here. And that's what we're advocating for. So there's a trade agreement between the US and South Africa that stipulates that to be a member of this agreement, the parties need to protect property rights and promote a free market while the South African government is doing the opposite. I think the appropriate step to take, and that's what we're as I said, what we're pushing for years, not for the US to say, well, you're breaking the agreement. So let's scrap the agreement. But rather to say, listen, we need you, we need to pressure the South African government, put diplomatic pressure on the South African government to stick to the agreement. And because if this agreement were to be breached, the consequence would be that there would be massive job losses in South Africa. We don't want that to happen. We want foreign investments into South Africa. Right. But we want the South African government. We need the South African government to reconsider its position on these socialist ideas that they're pushing. Okay, Ernst, we're out of time. Thank you so much. Ernst, through it, we'll be right back. Thank you very much, Michelle.