PRESIDENT Thabo Mbeki said on Thursday he would never tolerate illegal measures to return land taken from blacks under white apartheid rule. Briefing reporters after a three-day cabinet policy review, Mbeki announced moves to accelerate housing delivery, crack down on corruption and fight crime syndicates working from jails. Asked about the recent illegal occupation of land near Johannesburg and Cape Town by homeless blacks, Mbeki said the government was battling to reduce the housing backlog inherited from the white government defeated in 1994. He said the cabinet had resolved to speed housing delivery and land awards to people whose homes were taken under white rule, but he said the process could not be short circuited. ”We must make it quite clear to everybody that this government is not going to allow illegal behaviour with regard to these things. We just are not going to do it,” he said. – Reuters