Land transfer haunts South Africa's white farmers

JOHANNESBURG - The spectre of land expropriations is haunting South Africa's 50,000 white farmers after a major government land summit rejected the willing buyer /willing seller policy as the basis on which land re-distribution must proceed and instead suggested a "fast track" programme.

The weekend summit was convened by the government to review the snail's pace of land reform in South Africa.

The South African government has set an ambitious target of transferring 30 per cent of productive farmland from whites to previously disadvantaged blacks by 2014.

But President Thabo Mbeki's government is worried the target would not be made at the very slow rate at which white farmers are offering land for sale. It also claims the farmers are asking for unjustfiably exorbitant prices.

Deputy President Mlambo-Ngcuka told the summit that the willing buyer/willing seller scheme, through which farmers voluntarily offer their properties to government at market prices was a major drawback to land reform and said South Africa would embark on a "fast-track" program to meet its targets.

She was backed by Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza who said the government should strongly intervene to ensure expeditious redistribution.

Details of the suggested "fast track" are yet to be spelt out. But white farmers and the mainly white official opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) are up in arms, over the spectre of forced expropriations.

They have dismissed the government's complaints on land reform as an "electioneering strategy". South Africa holds crucial local government elections later this year.

The farmers and the DA have instead blamed the slow pace of land reform on "gross inefficiency" in the Agriculture and Land Affairs Ministry .

Prominent farmer Kraai Van Niekerk, a member of Agri SA, one of the biggest white agricultural unions, said he knew of many farmers who had long approached the Ministry of Agriculture and Land Affairs with proposals to sell their properties for land reform but have not had an answer two or three years later.

"Each time they seek clarification, they are shuffled from one bureaucrat to another.........Changing the rules is not the answer. It's the government's method of operation that is the biggest drawback ...," said Van Niekerk in an interview.

Mr Van Niekerk said changing the rules would threaten South Africa's position as one of six countries in the world which are net exporters of food.

The DA's spokesman on agriculture Maans Nel said the government should stop covering its mistakes by trying to play the "helpless victim".

If the government matched its commitment to land reform with the required budget and if it started implementing the legal measures at its disposal, the current situation would have looked dramatically different, he said.

Ninety-nine per cent of the blacks already re-settled were struggling because of lack of resources.

Nel said there was enough evidence to prove that the incompetence of many officials in Minister Didiza's department was the prime cause of delays to land reform.

He cited an example of one land owner in the Free State Province who had written to the provincial land affairs department on three separate occasions to indicate his willingness to sell his land at even below market prices but got no response.

"How can the department then at the same time plead there is not enough available land?" he asked.

When apartheid ended and Nelson Mandela took over in 1994, 87 per cent of South Africa's agricultural land was owned by whites. About 3.1 million hactares of land have been transferred to poor blacks, less than two per cent of available agricultural land.

Land reform is an emotive issue across southern Africa where the example of Zimbabwe looms large.

Land owned by some 4500 white farmers has been seized and given to landless blacks since 2000, with only 400 white landowners remaining now. Zimbabwe's agro-economy has since collapsed.

- THE INDEPENDENT