South Africa begins the descent...

[NotSoSilentBob]

www.iol.co.za/index.php?set_id=1&click_id=13&art_id=nw20 070213151122553C958150

SA expropriates first farm in reform drive

February 13 2007 at 03:21PM

By Gershwin Wanneburg

South Africa, under pressure to redress land ownership imbalances left by apartheid, has expropriated its first farm in a reform drive aimed at returning land to the black majority, officials said on Tuesday.

The state-ordered sale of a farm in the Northern Cape marks a new phase in the contentious issue in South Africa, where the government has come under fire for moving too slowly to put land in black hands.

More than a decade after the end of apartheid, over 90 percent of farmland is still owned by white farmers.

Growing impatience

Until now, the government has moved cautiously, careful not to rattle investor nerves given the chaos that accompanied a similar land redistribution process in neighbouring Zimbabwe.

But the government has recently hardened its stance, and officials said they would use the full power of post-apartheid laws which allow government to order land sales to speed up the process.

The first expropriation took effect on January 26, the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights said in a statement.

"I think it (the expropriation) is most significant... It (reform) is something that cannot lag forever," said Susan Booysen, a political scientist at the University of the Witwatersrand.

"The nitty-gritty of each individual case is an incredible mine field government has to go through."

Restitution is part of South Africa's broader land reform programme and allows blacks, many of whom were evicted from ancestral lands, to apply to have their rights restored or to ask for financial compensation.

They can also seek government loans to purchase land.

The farm in the Northern Cape province had belonged to the South African Evangelical Lutheran Church, which has been ordered to sell it for R35,5-million, the commission said.

The land was claimed by 471 local families, among them workers on the farm.

The commission said in August 89 percent of such cases nationwide had been settled, but overall the transfer of land has been far too slow in the eyes of many black South Africans.

Amid growing impatience and threats to invade land from small activist groups, South Africa has promised to move more quickly to erase one of the most glaring inequities left by decades of apartheid rule.

Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana - who has blamed white farmers for inflating land prices and stalling change - last year set a six month deadline for price negotiations after which she would take steps to expropriate.

President Thabo Mbeki's government has distanced itself from the violence that hit nearby Zimbabwe after tensions over land boiled over several years ago in a series of government-sanctioned farm seizures.

Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's critics say the country's current economic crisis is largely the result of the chaotic land grab, which gutted the key commercial agriculture sector gutted and frightened overseas investors.

South African officials, by contrast, emphasise that land redistribution will be governed by law, and in most cases will rely on negotiation with landholders to arrive at a fair price for the farms being repossessed.

[plantsman]

Glad to see eminent domain isn't exclusive to the US.