President Robert Mugabes chaotic and violent programme to seize white-owned farmland without compensation for redistribution to landless blacks led to the collapse of agriculture. Mugabes land reforms were also accompanied by corruption and gross human rights violations including the murder of several white farmers. Nkwinti said the new policy that Pretoria was working on was meant to avoid the situation as happened in its northern neighbour. He said: This about preventing Zimbabwe .. we have a major monopoly of land ownership in South Africa and we must break that monopoly.
Nkwinti said just like in Zimbabwe, where about 4000 white farmers owned most of the countrys best arable land, land in South Africa is concentrated in the hands of a few land owners, most of whom are foreigners. But Nkwinti, who was speaking on live television, did not elaborate on whether the government will consider amending the constitution to enable it to forcibly take land like what happened in Zimbabwe where the government had to pass legislation to change the constitution allowing it to compulsorily acquire land from white farmers.
South Africa just like Zimbabwe inherited an unjust land tenure system from previous white-controlled governments under which the bulk of the best arable land was reserved for whites while blacks were forced to crowd on mostly semi-arid and infertile soils.
Thousands of poor blacks are still waiting for the ANC government to deliver on its promise on coming to power in 1994 when it set itself an ambitious target of redistributing 30 percent of all agricultural land to the black majority by 2014. With four years before the delivery date, the South African government has only acquired about 4 percent of land from private owners for redistribution, and says it needs to accelerate the process amid growing unrest among the poor landless blacks. The huge cost of acquiring land estimated at R75 billion for 82 million hectares of land as well as problems in negotiating land prices under a “willing-buyer, willing-seller” policy have prompted calls for the government to rethink its ambitious land reform programme.
But South Africa, which has one of Africas biggest farming sectors and its biggest economy, has repeatedly said it will not follow the example of Zimbabwe. Harare refused to pay for land, saying whites had in the first place stolen the land from blacks. The Zimbabwe administration said it would only pay for improvements on farms such as buildings, boreholes, dams and roads and that it would determine the levels of compensation to be paid to farmers. Farm seizures are blamed for plunging Zimbabwe once a net exporter of the staple maize grain into severe food shortages since 2001 after black peasant farmers resettled on former white farms failed to maintain production because the government failed to support them with financial resources, inputs and skills training.
Post published in: News