Britain Supports Land Reform in South Africa - PM Theresa May

28 AUGUST 2018, 11:25AM
REUTERS AND BRENDA MASILELA

Britain supports South Africa's land reform programme provided it is carried out legally, Prime Minister Theresa May said in Cape Town. Picture: Reuters/Mike Hutchings

Cape Town - Britain supports South Africa's land reform programme provided it is carried out legally, Prime Minister Theresa May said in Cape Town on Tuesday, 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.

Reuters and African News Agency (ANA)