FIRM: President Cyril Ramaphosa
President Cyril Ramaphosa says there will be no land grabs under the land expropriation laws.
Responding to the Democratic Alliance (DA) who recently opened a case against the Expropriation Act, saying it is “unconstitutional”, he told South African whites that the government will not do what the apartheid government did to black people.
Ramaphosa was responding to the State of the Nation Address (SONA) Debate that took place in Cape Town on Thursday and Wednesday. He delivered his SONA last Friday.
In his reply, Ramaphosa told the House that black people, some of whom were in attendance, know the pain of being forcefully removed from their land or homes, therefore they won't do it.
In 1968, the apartheid regime began demolishing District Six to make way for a whites-only suburb, he said, adding that more than 60,000 people were forcibly removed.
He said: “Families were torn apart. An entire community and way of life was destroyed.
“Over the course of two decades, the apartheid regime forcibly removed more than 3.5 million people in District Six, Sophiatown, Marabastad, Cato Manor, Kroonstad, Nelspruit and many other places across the country.
“The people of this country know the pain of forced removals. That is why we will never allow forced removals again.
“Our experience of forced removals also explains the Constitutional requirement that the state must take reasonable measures, within its available resources, to foster conditions which enable citizens to gain access to land on an equitable basis.
“It is my firm and enduring belief that all of us as South Africans, as fellow citizens bound together by our history and our present, want the same thing.”
Ramaphosa's remarks come after the President Donald Trump cut financial aid to South Africa over the government’s land expropriation policy.
Trump also issued an order for the prioritisation of white Afrikaners through the United States refugee programme, accusing Pretoria of discriminating against Afrikaners through the newly signed Land Expropriation Act.
Many, including the government, have condemned Trump’s decision, saying he was misled and misinformed by AfriForum.
AfriForum turned down the offer by Trump, saying white Afrikaners were going nowhere and the Afrikaners’ future lies in Africa, specifically in South Africa.
Ramaphosa reiterated his stance that South Africans will not be bullied.