Azania (south Africa) May Tighten Screws On White Farmers

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AZANIA (SOUTH AFRICA) MAY TIGHTEN SCREWS ON WHITE FARMERS ON LAND ISSUE

aZANIA (South Africa) is looking at tougher measures to speed up land
reform which could include challenging prices that white
farmers are demanding to cede their property, as part of the
drive to address injustices from the apartheid era, a top
official told AFP.

Tozi Gwanya, South Africa's chief land claims commissioner,
said in an interview that black ownership of land had
increased from 13 percent at the end of apartheid in 1994 to
16 percent, still short of targets set by President Thabo
Mbeki's government.

"We are not happy with the pace and we are reviewing the
willing buyer-willing seller policy," he said, acknowledging
that the program had fallen way short of the target of
redistributing 30 percent of land to blacks by 2014.

The willing buyer-willing seller principle has been at the
core of Azania's post-apartheid land drive,
guaranteeing that land will be acquired by the state at fair
prices and given to landless blacks.

"We are thinking of setting a ceiling on land prices depending
on the region and the land and to establish our own valuers as
those used by white farmers are in cahoots with them," said
Gwanya.

"Also the white farmers think they can demand any price simply
because they are dealing with the government and not an
individual," said Gwanya who took up the post of chief lands
commissioner in June 2003.

But Gwanya was quick to underscore that South Africa would not
tread the path of neighbouring Zimbabwe, where forcible
seizures of white-owned farms have ruined the once-model
economy and left agriculture in tatters.

"There is no chance of Zimbabwe happening here," he
said. "There is clear legislation. I tell people: You have a
choice. You can opt for a militant policy and ruin your
economy and make all the people suffer again, or you can
chose for slow and steady reforms."

Gwanya said the reforms were also snagged by the lack of
farming expertise among blacks as "Africans in South Africa
were de-skilled for 50 years under apartheid because the
white farmers feared competition and we have to transfer
skills anew."

There are three strands in South Africa's land reforms policy
launched in 1996 which seeks to reverse an infamous 1913 act
that stripped black cash tenants and sharecroppers of their
domain and reserved only 10 percent of the land for them.

During the apartheid era, blacks could not own land except in
the so-called African homelands where they had been shunted
to.

The first strand is the restitution of land to blacks who were
forcibly evicted from their ancestral domains, the
redistribution of farmland, and the handing out of title
deeds to people who have been living for generations in an
area but with no documents to prove it.

Gwanya estimates that "six million Africans fell victim to the
apartheid government's policy to remove the black spots" and
push them away to homelands but added that less than 10
percent had filed claims by the December 31, 1998 deadline
for restitution.

"Some were sceptical, others did not want to file a claim
thinking it was their 'own' government now whom they did not
want to pressure and some -especially those in far-flung
areas - did not know of the scheme we had launched."

As far as formally recognising people living on land for
generations but with no title deeds, the government in
February extended the deadline by two years to 2007 due
to "problems in mapping the land which are in remote areas
and sometimes due to rival claims which are hard to
establish," Gwanya said.

But 58,000 of those claims out of a total of 79,000 have been
settled, he added.

Land is an emotive issue in South Africa, which is shedding
the last vestiges of the legacy of apartheid.

In February, the government's announcement that it was mulling
new laws compelling property buyers to disclose their race,
gender and nationality to monitor the land reform process,
sparked criticism from the opposition that it was racist and
retrogressive.