Theresa May said in Cape Town on Tuesday, that Britain supports South Africa’s land reform programme provided it is carried out legally, adding that she would discuss the issue with President Cyril Ramaphosa.
“The UK has for some time now supported land reform. Land reform that is legal, that is transparent, that is generated through a democratic process,” May told reporters.
“It’s an issue that I raised and discussed with President Ramaphosa when he was in London earlier this year. I’ll be talking about it with him later today.”
The land should be shared in South Africa so that everyone has an opportunity to benefit from what it has to offer, President Cyril Ramaphosa has previously said.
“We must make sure that everything which is in our country we share… It must never be that a small group of people just take what this country has to give and hold it to themselves and say it belongs to them only,” he said at the Biodiversity Economy Innovation conference last week in Thohoyandou in Limpopo.
“All of this belongs to all of us, and this is what this government wants to make sure,” he said to loud cheers.
Ramaphosa said land expropriation could make more land available for cultivation and the process would begin by using state-owned land, not privately-owned land.
In fact, the Prime Minister perhaps played her cards right on this one – the process of land reform is a lot less contentious than expropriation without compensation.
#TheresaMay: “By 2022, UK must be G7’s biggest investor in Africa. I pledge 4 Billion GBP investments in Africa with another 4 million after that. “ @eNCA
— Annika Larsen (@AnnikaLarsen1) August 28, 2018
Traditionally speaking, reform involves forms of compensation and the awarding of title deeds to rehomed residents.
Expropriation without compensation flirts with the idea that the state will take control of property – although, this is something that President Ramaphosa has denied he will pursue.