Ramaphosa vows to stop illegal land grabs in South Africa

South Africa will not allow illegal land grabs, President Cyril Ramaphosa said on Wednesday as the country prepares to expropriate land without compensation following a vote in parliament.
Ramaphosa, who replaced Jacob Zuma as president in February, is under pressure to deliver on promises to speed up land reform after slow progress at redistributing land to the country’s black majority since the end of white minority rule in 1994.
“We cannot have a situation where we allow land grabs, because that is anarchy,” Ramaphosa said in a speech in parliament.
“We cannot have a situation of anarchy when we have proper constitutional means through which we can work to give land to our people.”
Since parliament endorsed a motion to change the constitution to allow land expropriation without compensation late February.
The ruling African National Congress (ANC) has long promised reforms to redress racial disparities in land ownership, but moves to expropriate land without compensation gathered pace after the party formally backed the policy in December.
Ramaphosa has stressed that food production and security in the continent’s biggest maize producer must not be threatened by land reform.
The land issue in Africa’s most industrialised economy remains highly emotive more than two decades after the end of apartheid as white people still own most of South Africa’s land following centuries of brutal colonial dispossession.
South Africa has a history of colonial conquest and dispossession that pushed the black majority into crowded urban townships and rural reserves.
It has worried some economists and farming groups, which have warned of a potentially devastating impact on the agricultural sector.
South Africa’s ruling ANC aims to change the constitution to allow for land expropriation without compensation to address racial disparities in land ownership that persist more than two decades after apartheid’s demise in 1994.
The following explains some of the issues and risks involved in the plan, which Ramaphosa outlined to parliament on Wednesday.