Britain Supports South Africa’s land Reform Program
Prime Minister Theresa May announced in Cape Town on Tuesday that if South Africa’s land reform program is carried out legally, Britain will support it. In a speech, May lauded South Africa’s planned program for land reform:
“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. 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.”
Land reform that is legal? Hundreds of white South African farmers have been murdered with their families, their homes burned down, and displace from their own land by black South Africans since President Ramaphosa announced his land reform program.
The displaced South African farmers have been seeking political asylum. But why should PM May care?
PM May authored a bill that required immigrants to show proof they were earning 35,000 GBP or get deported. By the way, the average annual salary in U.K. is 29,000 GBP!
May also famously stated her reasons for abolishing the European Human Rights Act in 2011:
“We all know the stories about the Human Rights Act. The robber who cannot be removed because he has a girlfriend. The illegal immigrant who cannot be deported because – and I am not making this up – he has a pet cat. This is why I remain of the view that the Human Rights Act needs to go.”
May doesn’t care about human rights. So why should he care about the human rights of the South African farmers?
South African president, Cyril Ramaphosa stated earlier that land should be shared in his country so that everyone will have the chance to reap the benefits from what it has to offer.
He said that land expropriation could open more land to cultivation and stressed that the program will begin with state owned land, not privately owned land.
Land expropriation? Let’s call it for what it is… a land grab!
Speaking at the Biodiversity Economy Innovation conference last week in Thohoyandou in Limpopo, Ramaphosa remained defiant:
“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,”
“All of this belongs to all of us, and this is what this government wants to make sure,” he added.
But in the United States, President Donald Trump had a different view. His recent tweet on the South Africa situation went viral:
“I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.”
Minister for International Relations and Cooperation Lindiwe Sisulu slammed Trump’s tweet.
“I think it is a right-wing ideology, and it is very unfortunate. We’ve used every opportunity, coming through our communications, to explain to the world what it is that we’re doing. It is the most reasonable way to deal with a legacy such as we have. And we are almost amazed at how it could be misinterpreted and acceptable in certain quarters.”
PM May has been described by many government officials as “weak” including President Trump who once said May’s former Foreign Minister Boris Johnson would be a better Prime Minister for the U.K.
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