Wed, Jan 14, 2004 page7

• Land claims sow seed of tension in South Africa

  • REUTERS
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  The weather has not been kind to South African maize farmer Tom van Rooyen but his biggest worry is the political forecast.

  Standing by a stunted maize crop wilting in the African heat, van Rooyen says farmers are worried about impending land claims by communities evicted under white minority rule.

  Their concerns center on a new act which will allow the government to expropriate land for restitution where negotiations on a "willing buyer, willing seller" basis fail.

  With an election due within a few months, the African National Congress (ANC) government is making plenty of promises to the largely poor and black electorate as it seeks a third term in power.

  "You buy it [a new farm] with your heart, not with your brains," van Rooyen said as he surveyed his land at Eleaser, near Brakspruit, 120km southwest of Johannesburg, prime soil set amid picturesque rolling hills.

  Anton Wienand, who owns two farms in Mpumalanga province, has a claim against one of them despite being assured there were none when he bought the properties two years ago.

  "We have got to be realistic about the whole thing, not fight it -- and get a fair price for it," he said.

  The government-led seizure of white-owned farms in neighboring Zimbabwe -- which critics say has destroyed commercial agriculture in a regional breadbasket -- has exacerbated farmers' worries.

  "It's a scare ... because of the way the president is handling the Zimbabwe crisis," said van Rooyen, referring to Pretoria's so-called "quiet diplomacy" toward its neighbor, which many see as support for President Robert Mugabe.

  South African officials -- with a nervous eye on international investors -- have been at pains to insist that land redistribution here will be orderly and market-driven.

  "It would be illogical to try to do what they've done in Zimbabwe in a country like South Africa," said Nana Zenani, spokeswoman at the ministry of agriculture and land affairs.

  "We need the South African white farmers -- we need their productivity, we need them on board. It's a country for all South Africans," she said.

  The government's goal is to deliver 30 percent of white-owned agricultural land into black hands by 2014. Under the restitution process, some 45,096 of a total 70,000 urban and rural claims have been settled, representing 810,292 hectares.

  The ownership target is in line with the government's policy of raising black participation in an economy riven by glaring income disparities that still largely follow racial lines.

  Analysts say this is an urgent matter, with less than three percent of farmland transferred to black owners a decade after the end of white-apartheid rule.

  "If we want a democracy in 10 years' time we need to spend much, much more, on land reform directed at poor people now," wrote Tom Lodge, head of political studies at South Africa's University of the Witwatersrand.

  "Otherwise, in the year before the ANC's fifth term election, state sponsored illegal land seizures will make perfectly good sense to government leaders whose first priority, as with politicians anywhere, is retaining office."

  But Lodge also pointed out that radical land reform is unusual in a liberal democracy like South Africa, where the rights of property owners are firmly entrenched in the constitution.

  Resolving the issue, in short, will not be easy.

  State spending on land reform has soared, with 800 million rand (US$119.9 million) set aside for the 2003 to 2004 financial year -- more than double the previous year.
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