Govt aims to meet land target
2008-10-02 16:05
Pretoria - South Africa will stick to its ambitious plan to put 30% of farmland in black hands by 2014, even though it is lagging way behind target, a senior
government official said on Wednesday.
Land restitution is a racially sensitive issue in South Africa, troubled by the decline in agriculture in neighbouring Zimbabwe where white commercial farmers were often violently evicted by President Robert Mugabe's government.
After the fall of apartheid in 1994, the government set
itself a target of handing 30% of all agricultural land to the black majority by 2014. So far, however, it has only acquired four percent of land from private owners for redistribution, and says it needs to accelerate the process.
Authorities have gradually embarked on seizures to return
land to blacks whose land was forcibly taken under previous
governments.
Expropriation bill
"We have no intentions of changing that target. That is
where we are going and that is what we would want to see," Thozi
Gwanya, director-general in the Department of Land Affairs, told
an agriculture conference in Pretoria.
"The plan may have been ambitious, but if we had no plan at
all then there (would have been) no change," Gwanya said.
Farmer groups say the delays in land reform are slowing
investment in agriculture, stunting the sector's growth and
hampering the goals of lifting poor blacks out of poverty.
In an effort to try to speed up the land reform process, the
government tabled an expropriation bill in Parliament in July
that would allow it to forcibly seize land from farmers if
willing-buyer, willing-seller negotiations failed.
But the bill was shelved after opposition parties, farmer
bodies and other civic groups protested.
They said it was unconstitutional and would be similar to
Zimbabwe's land grabs, which disregarded property rights and
were a major factor behind the country's economic decline.
Bill may be reintroduced
The groups fear the bill could be reintroduced following
changes in the government after the ruling African
National Congress (ANC) forced pesident Thabo Mbeki to resign.
Analysts say the powerful Cosatu trade union federation,
which is allied to the ANC and the Communist Party and has
called for speedy land reforms, may have more influence with new
President Kgalema Motlanthe's government.
"As far as we understand the bill has only been shelved. It
has not been permanently withdrawn," said Nichola de Havilland,
deputy director general at the Centre for Constitutional Rights.
"Dependent on the role that the (ANC) alliance partners are
given in the new government, we could see the bill resubmitted
after elections next year," she told the conference.
ANC leader Jacob Zuma is expected to become president after
the general election due around April.
Farmers, bureaucracy blamed
Officials say mainly white farmers have stalled the land
reform programme by demanding excessive prices. The white
farmers blame bureaucratic shortcomings for slow progress.
"We understand that there may be some pressure on the
government politically on the land issue, but I don't much see
the point of doing something in the wrong way," said wheat
farmer Jaco van Rensburg.
"Doing it right may well save us some embarrassment later on, or going the way of Zimbabwe."