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Farmers demand fast land reform
Kwazulu-Natal black farmers on Thursday called on government to speed up the pace of land reform, saying that the time had come for white farmers to give "Caesar what belonged to Caesar". They made the call at the KwaZulu-Natal Agribusiness Conference Durban. Angry farmers said the process of returning their ancestral land, lost during apartheid, was moving at a terribly slow pace because government was "persuading too much" instead of making it clear that the land needed to be given back to its owners. Of South Africa's nine provinces, KZN is lagging far behind in terms of finalising land claims. According to the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights, there are close to 2,000 outstanding rural claims. Black farmers said the outstanding claims meant that they did not have the land that should be used for farming. Addressing delegates, the President of the National Black Farmers' Association, Dr Mandla Buthelezi, said it was disgusting that some white farmers were imposing conditions when government approached them for land. "These people did not pay a cent for the land, but they are now demanding exorbitant amounts if government wants to buy it and redistribute it to black people. They lie that they bought the land. "If what they are saying is true, they should show us receipts to prove that they really bought it. There are a lot of museums that I have visited throughout the country but I have never seen even a single receipt to show that white people bought land," he said. The slow pace of land restitution is creating a headache for the national government. President Thabo Mbeki recently said the government would review its "willing buyer, willing seller" approach to land restitution, which is largely dictated by market forces. The government has also promised that it will expropriate land from white farmers where talks had dragged on too long. The project manager of the commission in KZN, Brendan Boyce, said the major land restitution challenges were the high land prices and stiff opposition from land owners. "There is a problem of traditional boundaries being confused with restitution, a lack of co-ordination between departments and inadequate communication to and with stakeholders," he said. He said the commission had set a target to finalise all claims before 2008. Posted by: Besoeker 2006-02-20 |
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