South Africa's agriculture ministry caused disquiet among the country's farmers last week by threatening those who mistreat their workers with land expropriation.
"We are obviously disturbed by the persistent reports of abuses on farms," South African Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana told a national conference in Johannesburg on Thursday of the Food and Allied Workers Union that represents farm workers.
"This is in keeping with the law of the land: for those people who are not keeping [within] the law, the government has the right to expropriate," she said.
Land reform and redistribution are sensitive topics in a country where the minority white population still owns the vast majority of the land.
Xingwana came out in support of her deputy minister, Dirk du Toit, who was criticized by opposition parties for having referred in parliament the previous day to a lingering "medieval" attitude among farmers.
"My deputy minister knows what he is talking about," Xingwana told the conference.
In response to a question about farmers who lay off and evict workers unlawfully, Du Toit told members of parliament on Wednesday: "Those people who don't want to hear, we are not only going to take them to court, we are going to also take their land away from them."
This drew a sharp response from the country's largest farmers' union, Agri SA.
"Since the beginning of the year not a single case of illegal farm eviction has come to Agri SA's attention. Our conclusion is therefore that the deputy minister also regards legal evictions as unfair", it said in a statement.
Agri SA said it would raise its objections with South African President Thabo Mbeki and demand a clarification or retraction.
"Let them write a letter to the president and let's discuss the issue," the president's spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga said on Friday.
The main opposition Democratic Alliance has slammed Du Toit's statement as racist for implying that all white farmers abuse their workers.
"As a senior member of the ANC [African National Congress], he [Du Toit] stood up and made racist remarks about white farmers, insinuating that all of them assault their farm workers," the party's land affairs spokesman Maans Nel told parliament on Thursday.
"What sort of message are these senior people of the ANC sending out to farmers who are overwhelmingly positive about land reform and South Africa?" he said.
Hostility is rife in South Africa's farming sector, with concern about rural crime and farmer murders on the one hand, and complaints of ill treatment of farm workers, mostly black and colored (of mixed race) on the other.
Some white farmers fear they are the political targets of farm murders, 86 of which were reported in the past financial year.
And farm workers often complain of ill treatment by farmers whom they accuse of impounding their livestock, refusing to allow them to bury their family members on farms, or demolishing their homes.
Mbeki's government aims to redistribute 30 percent of the country's agricultural land to blacks by 2014.
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