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South Africa reaches out to apartheid's victims

Born on the family farm in South Africa's Free State, Angela Tshikare had the privileged upbringing of the landed class.

Then her family was banished, forced to sell up and move off their ancestral lands by the white apartheid government because they were black.

"I grew up here, I got married here. We were rich -- we had animals," said Tshikare, 75.

Tshikare's family was forced to move to Thaba Nchu in the fragmented "homeland" of Bophuthatswana, one of the supposedly independent states created by South Africa's white rulers to divide and contain the country's different black tribes -- and generally located on inferior farming land.

Today Tshikare is back on her ancestral lands after a 10-year legal campaign, as the black-led government tries to right the wrongs of apartheid.

"We never thought that this would happen, but through God's grace we are here," Tshikare said, bent over a walking frame as she surveyed what remains of the family homestead after two decades of neglect.

Thaba Patchoa is one of around 70,000 restitution claims in rural and urban areas lodged before the 1998 deadline.

Many want their original land or homes back, but others -- including those whose land has been built on or homes destroyed -- will settle for cash compensation to start afresh.

`Land month'

With elections next year the African National Congress government is keen to highlight its successes to an electorate impatient for land and jobs -- both still in short supply nine years after landmark free elections.

It declared June "Land Month," with a rash of ceremonies to hand back farms like Thaba Patchoa to mark the 90th anniversary of the June 19, 1913, Native Land Act which provided the legal basis for evictions and the harsher Native Trust and Land Act of 1936 which endorsed the clearance of so-called "Black Spots."

"When we started in 1994 we had never governed before, and I think that is something people forget when they look at what we have done," Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Thokozile Didiza told assembled dignitaries and local people when Thaba Patchoa was handed back to its owners.

"As a government we have been true to our promise to give back the land."

State spending on land restitution and redistribution has soared, with 800 million rand (US$103.6 million) set aside for settlements in the 2003/2004 year, from 391 million rand a year before.

But the government's aim of settling all the claims by the end of 2005 looks ever further from reach and critics say the target of transferring 30 percent of farm land to apartheid's victims by 2015 is equally steep.

"It is certainly not going to be resolved within the timeframe [President Thabo] Mbeki has set, but also you don't want to go too fast, because that's how you get misjudgments," said Durkje Gilfillan of the Legal Resources Center (LRC), which has offered free advice to poor South Africans for 25 years.

Specter of Zimbabwe

The specter of neighboring Zimbabwe, where land seizures helped spark economic and political breakdown, demonstrates the urgency of resolving the land issue -- but also the need to do it in an orderly, legal and fair manner.

Gangs loyal to Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe began storming white-owned farms ahead of elections in 2000, seizing land and sometimes killing farmers and their black workers, and a few white South Africans fear their own country may go the same way, especially given Mbeki's failure to take a strong public stance against Mugabe.

Didiza said South Africans need not worry.

"The process in which it is handled in South Africa in terms of legal framework and transparency is one of the strengths that gives me assurance that we are not about to go the route Zimbabwe has gone," she said. "I've always heard people say the government is too slow but that's because we have to negotiate."

Negotiations have produced a medley of local settlements, including cooperative and leasing deals with some white commercial farmers staying on the land but paying rent to the local community or a trust fund in their name.

Agreements are often complex, with more than one group claiming the same area of land due to successive dispossessions, or rival clans disagreeing how to share land or compensation.

But getting the land can be just the start -- making a viable living can be tough.

"The whole question of quickly settling this and meeting a deadline is not feasible."
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