CAPE TOWN, Aug. 23 (Xinhua) -- The following are news items in South Africa's major news outlets on Thursday:

-- U.S. President Donald Trump has tweeted that he has asked his Secretary of State to look into land expropriation and the killing of farmers in South Africa.

"I have asked Secretary of State 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," Trump tweeted.(News24)

-- South African President Cyril Ramaphosa has rejected the idea of state ownership of land, saying it would "rob" people who have a long-held yearning to own their own property and make it difficult for them to raise capital.

Questions about land dominated Ramaphosa's question and answer session in the National Assembly on Wednesday afternoon. (Eyewitness News).

-- President Cyril Ramaphosa has stressed that the announcement he had made on the expropriation of land without compensation was in his capacity as African National Congress (ANC) leader and that it was not aimed at pre-empting the parliamentary process on the amendment of Section 25 of the Constitution.

Ramaphosa was answering oral questions in the National Assembly on Wednesday. (South African Broadcasting Corporation) Enditem