South Africa is prepared to increase seizures of white-owned land to fulfil a promise to restore property to the black majority, a regional land claims commissioner said on Wednesday.
”In all cases where negotiations are going to be stalled by intransigence and deliberate frustration of the restitution process by the current landowners, we are going to expropriate,” Tumi Seboka, who presides over Gauteng and North West provinces, told reporters.
Under the land restitution scheme, expropriation is considered when the government seeks to acquire white-owned land from farmers after ”willing-buyer willing-seller” talks stall.
The government’s aim is to return land taken during colonialism or apartheid by 2008.
The plan is part of a larger agricultural reform drive to put a third of all arable land in black hands by 2014 — but critics say overall progress has been slow.
South Africa has rebuffed comparison to neighbouring Zimbabwe’s sometimes violent land seizures, saying land reform will be carried out in an orderly fashion and according to law.
But the government has warned it will use post-apartheid constitutional powers to enforce land sales to settle the small fraction of outstanding restitution claims. The government said this month it had formally expropriated its first farm.
”We have cases where we are not breaking through,” Seboka said.
White farmers still control an estimated 90% of prime commercial farmland in South Africa, more than 12 years after the country democratically elected its first multiracial government. – Reuters