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Lulu Xingwana, SA's agriculture and land affairs minister
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October 27, 2007, 07:15
South Africa's target of transferring 30% of farmland to black ownership by 2014 may be unattainable, but it will pursue its policy of seizing land from white farmers, a government official said yesterday. The government set itself a target of handing 30% of all agricultural land to the black majority by 2014 but it is only just approaching 4% of that target and says it needs to accelerate the process.
To do so, authorities have gradually embarked on seizures to return land to blacks whose land was forcibly taken under previous governments. Officials have stuck by the 2014 target, as land activists grow increasingly impatient. However, in what may be the first such acknowledgement by a senior official, Chief Land Claims Commissioner Thozi Gwanya said the goal might prove elusive.
"There are many challenges. It may not be attainable in the medium term, but we say (30% of land) is a reasonable and practical target," he told Reuters.
"I think we were very optimistic when we set the (2014) target. The challenges relate to the acquiring of land, the negotiations, the high land prices, the resistance to land reform by some of the farmers. All of these things we assumed that they would not be contentious." Officials say whites, who still dominate farming more than a decade after the end of apartheid, have stalled the programme by demanding excessive prices. White farmers say the step is too drastic and blame bureaucratic shortcomings for slow progress.
Land seizures occur only as restitution -- where those who were evicted from ancestral land under apartheid and British colonial rule have applied to have it returned or receive cash as compensation for the loss. Otherwise, the government hopes to achieve its 30% goal by encouraging the black majority to apply for loans to buy farms. Land restitution is a racially sensitive issue in South Africa, still haunted by the decline in agriculture in neighbouring Zimbabwe, where white commercial farmers were often violently evicted by President Robert Mugabe's government.
Expropriation
Pretoria has vowed that its own version of this programme will be orderly. Gwanya, who oversees restitution under the Department of Land Affairs, said his office would stick to its policy, but within legal limits. "Expropriation is a programme of government, it's in the constitution, it's in the various land legislation, like the Restitution Act but there's also an Expropriation Act in government," he said.
Gwanya said the government was processing the expropriation of an area including between 30 and 40 properties in the south eastern Kwazulu-Natal province. So far, it had authorised six notices for possible expropriation, he said. However, farmers say those willing to hand over their land are frustrated by bureaucratic inefficiency and fear that it will hinder investment in agriculture.
"Why does this process take so long? We have had negotiations going on in excess of 12 months and you cannot go on (farming) under those circumstances," one farmer told an agricultural conference in the capital Pretoria yesterday. - Reuters
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