South Africa's lands minister on Tuesday sought to play down controversy over plans to start large-scale land expropriations as white farmers appealed for compromise.
"There should not be any drama and there is no drama," said Thoko Didiza after the land claims commissioner said that the government would begin in March expropriating farms following years of fruitless negotiations on compensation.
President Thabo Mbeki's administration has set a goal of handing over nearly a third of white-owned land to new black farmers by 2014 as part of its land reform program.
But South Africa has vowed that it will not follow the path of Zimbabwe where thousands of white-owned farms have been seized by President Robert Mugabe's government since 2000 and given to landless blacks.
"South Africa does have a history of expropriation. That is why you have an expropriation act of 1975," said Didiza.
Chief lands commissioner Tozi Gwanya on Monday said the government was ready to halt negotiations on compensation with some white farmers, saying they had been dragging on for too long and that the owners were demanding high prices.
While 71,000 land claims had been settled as of the end of January, "there are in excess of 7,000 claims that have been outstanding," he said, referring to claims for restitution from blacks who lost their land under apartheid.
"We have been negotiating with some white farmers for two or three years especially in four provinces -- Limpopo, Mpuma-langa, North West and KwaZulu Natal -- and this has to stop," he said.
"From March, we will begin expropriating land for which negotiations have gone on for that period or more," said Gwanya. He added that a six-month deadline would be imposed on new cases.
Speaking at a briefing for journalists in Cape Town, Didiza stressed that the expropriations were legal.
"What the commissioner said was indeed we will use that mechanism as provided for in the Constitution and in the amended restitution act of 1995, which provides for purposes of land redistribution," she said.
But the biggest organization representing white farmers, Agri South Africa, on Tuesday called for a compromise.
"It is in everyone's interest that land claims be completed as soon as possible, but it needs to take place in a fair manner," said Annelize Crosby, land affairs adviser at Agri South Africa.
"You cannot go around taking land left, right and center. It would be wrong to penalize farmers because they want fair prices for their properties," she said.
Crosby said the land claims commission needed to keep the complexity of the process in mind.
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