Ramaphosa: No need to worry about land reforms

Relax. That’s the message South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has for anyone fretting about the nation’s plans for land reform, which drew a critical tweet from President Donald Trump last month.

The Government won’t allow “land grabs”, and land redistribution designed to address racial inequities will be orderly, Ramaphosa said yesterday in remarks to Parliament.

He also said he doesn’t expect South Africa to be targeted by sanctions as it legally pursues land reform. Some South Africans have speculated that the United States might impose sanctions similar to those against neighbouring Zimbabwe, where violent land seizures occurred years ago.

“Just relax,” Ramaphosa said. “This process will end up very well.”

Some groups in South Africa, however, worry about economic damage from plans for the expropriation of land without compensation.

The economy, one of Africa’s biggest, is already in recession and struggling with problems including a weak currency and fallout from state corruption under former President Jacob Zuma.

Ramaphosa has said the ruling African National Congress party will push for a constitutional amendment to clarify the land reform process, a move that some critics believe is designed to drum up voter support ahead of elections next year.

White South Africans, who comprise about 8 per cent of the population, own more than 70 per cent of the country’s private agricultural land even though white minority rule ended in 1994.

The problem is more than a century old: A 1913 law allowed South Africa’s black majority to own just a small portion of land, formalising a race-based system of dispossession that had been in place for decades.

When people learn about the history, “everybody gets a shock and they wonder: ‘How could this have been allowed’?” said Ramaphosa.