No Zimbabwe style land grabs in South Africa: Zuma

Johannesburg - Zimbabwean-style land grabs will not happen in South Africa, President Jacob Zuma said on Monday.

"I don't think the South African and Zimbabwean constitutions are the same. Our constitution is very important because it guides us on what we do," Zuma said.

He was speaking during a business breakfast in Sandton on Monday morning presented by New Age newspaper and the SABC.

The session was organised to give the president the opportunity to update the country about the progress Zuma's administration had made since the state of the nation address, at the start of the year.

The land question was asked by Mduduzi Vilane, who wanted to know if South Africa had plans to avoid what happened in Zimbabwe, where land belonging to whites was taken without compensation as part of the country's land redistribution programme.

Zuma described the issue of land redistribution as a serious matter that needed attention, adding that everything needed to be done according to law.

He said they were looking at reopening the process of lodging land claims because the process had been short. The cutoff date for lodging claims was December 1998.

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