South Africa's plan to expropriate land without compensation is causing nervousness in markets but the process is likely to be adopted in a rational way, Goldman Sachs' Africa chief said on Wednesday.

"We can't pre-empt what that process is going to be so there is naturally some nervousness in the market," Colin Coleman, Africa director of Goldman Sachs, told a conference in Cape Town.

"One has to be confident we are not going to end up in an irrational space and we will end up close to a rational position."

-Reuters