No 'Zimbabwe style' reform for SA

Minister Lulu Xingwana said recently negotiations with white farmers over the price of land bought for reform must not go on longer than six months.

Commercial farmers' unions said the remarks were causing tensions.

On Wednesday, the minister defended her position, saying the process was within the law and could not go on "forever".

A ministry statement said Ms Xingwana "rejects as malicious recent media insinuations that the country's land reform will go the 'Zimbabwe route'."

"There are many farmers we have been negotiating land prices with for more than four to five years without success. Surely, we cannot keep on negotiating forever, especially genuine restitution cases," the statement quoted the minister as saying.

'Reasonable price'

"It's in our interest to see the land reform programme finalised because a farmer can do very little with his land when it's under claim"
Chris Jordaan
Transvaal Agricultural Union

But landowners deny they are trying to stall the reform process.

"We never asked to be paid more than a reasonable commercial price for our properties," Hans van der Merwe of the farmers' union AgriSA said, responding to the minister's announcement on Friday that the government would expropriate land if it could not agree on a price with the seller within six months of starting negotiations.

Chris Jordaan of the Transvaal Agricultural Union expressed concern that uncertainty over land reform was causing farmers to stop farming.

"It's in our interest to see the land reform programme finalised because a farmer can do very little with his land when it's under claim," he told the South African Press Association.

Land purchases are part of a government programme to get 30% of farmland in black hands by 2014.

Previously they were conducted on a principle of "willing buyer, willing seller", but the government says this has led to white farmers charging unreasonably high prices for their land.

Land reform is one of the most emotive and politically charged issues in South Africa. And returning land seized from black farmers during apartheid was one of the key promises made by the African National Congress when it came to power in 1994.

Twelve years later, only 4% of white-owned land has been transferred and the government has come under fire for going too slowly.

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