Post by Bozur on Oct 3, 2005 17:57:27 GMT -5
South Africa to Take Farm From a White
Mujahid Safodien/Associated PressSome residents of the Richtersveld area of northwestern South Africa traveled in a donkey-drawn cart in March. They are living there while awaiting the outcome of a land claim action in nearby Alexandra Bay.
By MICHAEL WINES
Published: September 27, 2005
JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 26 - South Africa is planning for the first time to expropriate a white-owned farm and transfer the land to black owners, a move that some experts here say may herald a new, aggressive effort to revive a moribund land redistribution program.
The government Commission on Restitution of Land Rights said late last week that it intended to serve notice on the white owner of two farms totaling 1,235 acres near Delareyville, about 160 miles west of Johannesburg, after two and a half years of negotiations to buy the farm ended in an impasse.
More than 400 black families who claim the farms say their ancestors were illegally evicted from the land from 1918 to 1945. The owner, Hannes Visser, said Monday in a telephone interview that property records refuted that claim and that the government's offer to purchase the land was far below its value.
Regardless of who is right, the case has political and social implications far beyond its legal importance. Zimbabwe has been confiscating whites' farmland without compensation since 2000, and Namibia began expropriating a handful of white-owned farms 20 months ago under rising pressure from hundreds of thousands of landless blacks.
In South Africa, where blacks own just 4 percent of the farmland, a government pledge to raise the share of black ownership to 30 percent by 2014 has foundered, with bureaucratic and financial problems. In rural areas, it is slowly emerging as a serious political issue.
Many experts here say the prevailing approach to land redistribution, in which whites sell their farms to the government and the government subsidizes resale to blacks, has failed. In July the nation's deputy president, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, said at a national meeting on land distribution that the government was at risk of being exploited by white landowners seeking to reap a profit.
President Thabo Mbeki signed legislation in January of last year allowing the government to expropriate land without court approval, providing that landowners were fairly compensated and could contest the process in court. But until Thursday, when the restitution commission announced plans to seize Mr. Visser's farm, that option was more academic than real.
The two farms at issue are part of more than 2,500 acres claimed by the black families. Three other farmers who owned the rest of that land have sold their farms to the government for redistribution, said Jeremiah Moropa, who heads a family group that is seeking the farmland.
In a telephone interview from Pretoria, Mr. Moropa said his ancestors had been victims of "a vicious campaign" to drive them off their land, including destruction of crops and livestock and attacks on their homes.
But Mr. Visser, who owns the two remaining farms, argued that the claims on his land were invalid. In any case, he said, the price offered him by the government - about $275,000 - is too low for the farm and meat plant he has built there. Mr. Visser said courthouse records showed that the families had not been evicted, but sold their land to the government from 1939 to 1942.
"This is not about restitution," he said. "It's about self-enrichment."
On Monday, Ben Cousins, a professor of land and agrarian studies at the University of the Western Cape in Bellville, who focuses on the country's land reform movement, said the expropriation threat appeared to be a limited, "by the book" move by the government to resolve a long-simmering dispute.
But he said it would signal a more intensive effort, in the wake of the July meeting on land distribution, to increase the rate at which white-held lands were transferred to blacks.
South Africa, he said, is not Zimbabwe, where wholesale seizures without compensation are the rule and have helped destroyed that nation's economy. "Changes here aren't going to involve changes in the law," he said. "It's more a matter of greater use of the existing mechanism."
In Cape Town, a spokeswoman for Agri S.A., an organization largely representing white farmers, played down the impact of the expropriation announcement.
"I think there's been an overreaction to this in a sense," said the spokeswoman, Annelize Crosby. While the group considers the reasons for taking Mr. Visser's land to be ill-founded, she said, the group has no objection to expropriating land "as long as it's done for a good reason and for the right price."
Mujahid Safodien/Associated PressSome residents of the Richtersveld area of northwestern South Africa traveled in a donkey-drawn cart in March. They are living there while awaiting the outcome of a land claim action in nearby Alexandra Bay.
By MICHAEL WINES
Published: September 27, 2005
JOHANNESBURG, Sept. 26 - South Africa is planning for the first time to expropriate a white-owned farm and transfer the land to black owners, a move that some experts here say may herald a new, aggressive effort to revive a moribund land redistribution program.
The government Commission on Restitution of Land Rights said late last week that it intended to serve notice on the white owner of two farms totaling 1,235 acres near Delareyville, about 160 miles west of Johannesburg, after two and a half years of negotiations to buy the farm ended in an impasse.
More than 400 black families who claim the farms say their ancestors were illegally evicted from the land from 1918 to 1945. The owner, Hannes Visser, said Monday in a telephone interview that property records refuted that claim and that the government's offer to purchase the land was far below its value.
Regardless of who is right, the case has political and social implications far beyond its legal importance. Zimbabwe has been confiscating whites' farmland without compensation since 2000, and Namibia began expropriating a handful of white-owned farms 20 months ago under rising pressure from hundreds of thousands of landless blacks.
In South Africa, where blacks own just 4 percent of the farmland, a government pledge to raise the share of black ownership to 30 percent by 2014 has foundered, with bureaucratic and financial problems. In rural areas, it is slowly emerging as a serious political issue.
Many experts here say the prevailing approach to land redistribution, in which whites sell their farms to the government and the government subsidizes resale to blacks, has failed. In July the nation's deputy president, Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, said at a national meeting on land distribution that the government was at risk of being exploited by white landowners seeking to reap a profit.
President Thabo Mbeki signed legislation in January of last year allowing the government to expropriate land without court approval, providing that landowners were fairly compensated and could contest the process in court. But until Thursday, when the restitution commission announced plans to seize Mr. Visser's farm, that option was more academic than real.
The two farms at issue are part of more than 2,500 acres claimed by the black families. Three other farmers who owned the rest of that land have sold their farms to the government for redistribution, said Jeremiah Moropa, who heads a family group that is seeking the farmland.
In a telephone interview from Pretoria, Mr. Moropa said his ancestors had been victims of "a vicious campaign" to drive them off their land, including destruction of crops and livestock and attacks on their homes.
But Mr. Visser, who owns the two remaining farms, argued that the claims on his land were invalid. In any case, he said, the price offered him by the government - about $275,000 - is too low for the farm and meat plant he has built there. Mr. Visser said courthouse records showed that the families had not been evicted, but sold their land to the government from 1939 to 1942.
"This is not about restitution," he said. "It's about self-enrichment."
On Monday, Ben Cousins, a professor of land and agrarian studies at the University of the Western Cape in Bellville, who focuses on the country's land reform movement, said the expropriation threat appeared to be a limited, "by the book" move by the government to resolve a long-simmering dispute.
But he said it would signal a more intensive effort, in the wake of the July meeting on land distribution, to increase the rate at which white-held lands were transferred to blacks.
South Africa, he said, is not Zimbabwe, where wholesale seizures without compensation are the rule and have helped destroyed that nation's economy. "Changes here aren't going to involve changes in the law," he said. "It's more a matter of greater use of the existing mechanism."
In Cape Town, a spokeswoman for Agri S.A., an organization largely representing white farmers, played down the impact of the expropriation announcement.
"I think there's been an overreaction to this in a sense," said the spokeswoman, Annelize Crosby. While the group considers the reasons for taking Mr. Visser's land to be ill-founded, she said, the group has no objection to expropriating land "as long as it's done for a good reason and for the right price."