But the tweet also had a second effect, this one much less usual: It seems actually to have changed real-world policy for the better. On Tuesday, South Africa’s governing African National Congress party withdrew “for further consideration” a bill that would have authorized uncompensated land confiscations.

The issue is not yet dead: The bill—not yet enacted into law—was withdrawn for reasons of procedure, not principle. New South African president Cyril Ramaphosa maintains he will soon introduce new land laws of his own. Yet there’s no mistaking Ramaphosa’s extreme discomfort with uncompensated land seizures. The day after Trump’s tweet, Ramaphosa published an op-ed in The Financial Times that handled the issue with sugar tongs:

“South Africans are currently engaged in an intense debate over the prospect of expropriation of land without compensation as one among several measures to achieve [land] reform.” Ramaphosa proceeded to scold “commentators [who] have confined their engagement on this matter to soundbites and not to the substance.”