JOHANNESBURG The South African government last week said it was planning to resubmit to Parliament a law that would allow it to seize land from farmers if negotiations to buy the land from them failed. Land Affairs director general Thozi Gwanya told the media: “The minister of public works and the minister of rural development are in the process of reviving the discussions of the bill so that they can go and reopen the debate and the hearings (in Parliament). We don’t have a timeline yet for when it will return to Parliament.”
The proposed law, that President Jacob Zumas ruling ANC party says is necessary to quicken South Africas snail-paced land reform programme, was first brought to Parliament last year. It was put on hold after farmers groups, opposition parties and civic groups objected to the law saying it could lead to land Zimbabwe-style land grabs.
South Africa, which like Zimbabwe inherited an unjust and skewed land tenure system from previous white minority governments, wants to transfer over 30 percent of agricultural land to landless blacks by 2014.
But the land redistribution process has been painfully slow with only about 5.2 million hectares of the targeted 24 million hectares of agricultural land handed over to blacks since the fall of apartheid in 1994.
While the ANC government is under pressure to quicken land redistribution, it has also been keen to reassure investors and the markets that its land reform programme will be orderly and not violent and lawless as happened in Zimbabwe.
But critics say many of the same problems faced by Zimbabwe, including lack of proper support for new black farmers and inadequate farming skills, are likely to hinder South Africa’s programme.
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