South Africa’s Cabinet has approved a Bill that would speed up its land reform programme aimed at transferring 30% of farmland to black ownership by 2014, a government spokesperson said on Thursday.
An existing land expropriation Act has failed to make significant inroads into land redistribution.
The government says a willing-buyer willing-seller arrangement with farmers has failed. White farmers are hesitant to sell their prime land at reduced market prices.
”It’s approved as of yesterday [Wednesday],” said government spokesperson Themba Maseko.
The Bill now needs parliamentary approval.
The government set itself a target of handing 30% of all agricultural land to the black majority by 2014 but it is only just approaching 4% of that target and says it needs to accelerate the process.
To do so, authorities have gradually embarked on seizures to return land to black South Africans whose land was forcibly taken under previous governments.
Officials have stuck by the 2014 target, as land activists grow increasingly impatient.
”The transformation we are pursuing is not intended to negatively affect farming, but to strengthen it, expand it and make it more sustainable,” Jacob Zuma, president of the African National Congress, said in a speech to South African grain farmers on Thursday.
Constitutional rights
The Bill calls for the state to take reasonable legislative and other measures to enable citizens to gain access to land on an equitable basis.
”Expropriation must be regulated by constitutional rights to administrative action that is lawful, reasonable and procedurally fair,” reads part of a supplementary note on the Bill Maseko presented after the briefing.
Officials say white South Africans, who still dominate farming more than a decade after the end of apartheid, have stalled the programme by demanding excessive prices.
White farmers say the step is too drastic and blame bureaucratic shortcomings for slow progress.
Land seizures occur only as restitution — where those who were evicted from ancestral land under apartheid and British colonial rule have applied to have it returned or receive cash as compensation for the loss.
Otherwise, the government hopes to achieve its 30% goal by encouraging black farmers to apply for loans to buy farms. – Reuters