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Ramaphosa confident S.Africa won’t suffer sanctions over land
CAPE TOWN, Sept 11, 2018 (BSS/AFP) – President Cyril Ramaphosa on Tuesday
dismissed fears that South Africa may come under sanctions if it carries out
a proposal to expropriate white farms without compensation.
US President Donald Trump tweeted last month that white farmers were being
forced off their land and many of them killed, touching on the overwhelmingly
white ownership of farmland in South Africa: one of the most sensitive issues
in the country’s post-apartheid history.
Trump said he had asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to look into the
reforms, which have raised fears that the policy could have disastrous
repercussions like in neighbouring Zimbabwe, whose economy was ruined in the
process.
“We have no reason to believe that any country would impose sanctions on
South Africa for any actions that we take, actions that are constitutional,
that are lawful and consistent with international law,” Ramaphosa told
parliament, responding to a question.
Ramaphosa said South Africa would “keep on educating those who are
interested in our affairs…those who may not understand the processes that
we have gone through”.
“And it is for this reason that we respond as we do, not only to the
Americans but to whomsoever has a question about this”.
According to Ramaphosa, whites, who make up eight percent of the population
“possess 72 percent of farms”. In contrast, only four percent of farms are in
the hands of blacks.
A few days after Trump’s tweet, Ramaphosa reacted angrily saying: “I don’t
know what Donald Trump has to do with South African land because he has never
been here.”
“South Africa belongs to all the people who live here in South Africa, it
does not belong to Donald Trump; he can keep his America, when I meet him I
will tell him.”
Ramaphosa told lawmakers that “no communication was received by my office
from the government of the United States of America regarding the
expropriation of land without compensation”.
Ramaphosa, who faces elections in 2019, has said expropriating farms
without compensating their owners would “undo a grave historical injustice”
against the black majority during colonialism and the apartheid era.
BSS/AFP/MRI/2336 HRS