Johannesburg — THE government planned to revive a bill to make it easier to seize land from white farmers who refused to sell their properties for redistribution to blacks, a senior land reform official said at an agricultural congress in Johannesburg yesterday.
The controversial expropriation bill was shelved a year ago after critics warned it was unconstitutional as it would give officials rather than the courts the power to decide on compensation.
While the move is an attempt by the government to speed up land reform, for which it ran out of money this year, it might not achieve this as cases could drag on in court for years.
But officials could be banking on the threat of expropriation to put farmers off holding out for more than market-related prices.
Land reform director-general Thozi Gwanya told Business Day his minister, Gugile Nkwinti, and Public Works Minister Geoff Doidge were considering input from a government task team set up to amend the bill and resubmit it to Parliament.
"The two ministers are in the process of reviving discussion of the bill," he said on the sidelines of AgriSA's annual congress yesterday. This would include public hearings in Parliament, he said.
The bill was to enable the state to expropriate farms in the public interest, including for land reform. It was to replace legislation that catered only for expropriation for public purposes, such as building roads. It would also make it easier to pay farmers less than market value, and was expected to help the state buy land more cheaply amid huge budget shortfalls.
Gwanya declined to be drawn on whether officials would still have the power to determine compensation. "All these issues are still under discussion."
His department admitted this year it would not meet the target of transferring 30% of white farmland to blacks by 2014 because it had run out of money and was concerned about declining production on redistributed farms.
Only 5% had been transferred to date.
Gwanya said at the congress the state's decision to revive the bill was in response to mounting calls "to review the willing buyer, willing seller model and investigate less costly alternatives".
The Land Claims Commission, which processes claims by victims of forced removals, ran out of money this year while facing a R3bn shortfall for claims already approved. It needs another R16bn over the next three years at today's market prices, but has been allocated only R5,2bn.
"We have been paying very high prices for land precisely because we are paying for the emotional value, not market value. Clearly the state cannot afford this," said Gwanya.
Property law expert Gerrit Grobler said at the congress the government was naive to think it could acquire 30% of white-owned farms from willing sellers at market value.
"If their farms aren't on the market and government wants to buy, farmers will inflate prices. We know of cases where farms were sold at three or four times their market value. I say expropriate, or pay through your nose," he said.
But he cautioned that the courts -- and not officials -- had to decide on just and equitable compensation, including for emotional distress and loss of future earnings. "No democracy in the world allows officials to decide compensation."
AgriSA spokesman Theo de Jager conceded that the government had "paid too much for some farms", but said many had been paid as much as 50% below market value. "We expect to take this issue to the Sadc tribunal."
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If anyone should be getting paid for land in Africa it should be the black South Africans. How on earth are you going to PAY a thief for the land they stole from you? Right there the government is setting itself up as being a bunch of flunkies for whites by not recognizing the fundamental facts of history. Those facts win out over any sort of nonsense about "economic principles" especially as blacks are dirt poor in South Africa to begin with. Before any white rights to land in South Africa are recognized, the fact that black Africans have had their land stolen through a deliberate policy of theft and settlement by whites from Europe MUST be acknowledged. By acknowledging that, it makes any CLAIM that whites have on the land null and void. THAT means that they have no right to profit, buy, sell or anything else any land in South Africa as all of it is STOLEN and not theirs to begin with. To PAY white South Africans for land in South Africa is to acknowledge their RIGHT to own control and profit off the land in South Africa. That in itself is a contradiction. Either the land was stolen by whites from black South Africans through racist policies of European industrialists and bankers or they didn't. If they did, then there is no need such thing as them getting paid for THEIR land, because it IS NOT theirs to sell in the first place. The only option in that case is to GIVE BACK the land pure and simple and if ANYTHING pay back the Africans some amount of money for the PROFITS they have STOLEN from them over the last 100 or more years. THAT is only right. The OTHER option is simply dumb to begin with. Waiting for white South Africans to WANT to sell land BACK to blacks who they stole it from not only ACKNOWLEDGES the rights of whites to PROFIT off of black land that they stole, it also contradicts the very fact that they STOLE it to KEEP it to begin with. Again such a contradiction makes no sense as the FACTS on the ground say that the land was stolen by whites for THEM and THEM ONLY to benefit and profit and with NO INTENT of giving it back. Which FUNDAMENTALLY means that the only way for Africans to get it back is to TAKE it back. There is no need to play games about it.
A highly volatile response from Wildchild. One can see that whoever presented the last comment was primarily driven by emotion, a fair amount of hysteria, and not overburdened by logic either. It's also spoken like somebody who's never actually been there and is struggling against some "referred social conscience". On the other hand, I've had direct experience of the good and bad from both sides of the story, and I can promise you with things like this there are no innocents. The Zulu, Matabele and Xhosa were at each others throats long before the white folks figured out which end of the ox-wagon faced forwards. They were raiding cattle and robbing each other blind before they'd ever seen a white skin.
I'll refrain from over-emphasizing the capital letters and exclamation marks, as obviously all the previous writer needs is a few stones to propel from within the confines of his (or her) glass house to escalate into full-blown hysteria.
Land-grabbing is not a new phenomenon. The Conquistadors did it, the American settlers did it, the British did it (mixed in with the Vikings and the Normans), the Aussies too. All of them can be said to have no valid claim on the land, and by extension, no valid part in the outcome of history. So there we can demonstrate fairly easily that the above outburst is mostly emotion and not overburdened with logic. Fair enough though it seems to make the slightly short-sighted judgement, it seems absolutely futile to try and redress the injustices of the past., especially when tribes tended to be nomadic by nature and land was never "owned" previously. It was the European culture that introduced land "ownership" to start off with.
The kind of thinking presented in the previous comment is not productive by any means, and presenting this kind of strange logic would also infer that the Germans still need to be punished for what happened to the Jews three generations ago. And that IBM should be held accountable for supporting the Nazi war machine. And the Catholic church also be held responsible for assisting the Nazis. And Siemens should be banned or boycotted for the same reason. And the Japanese. And the Americans for giving the Indians smallpox-infested blankets, and the massacres. And the British, for colonising, murdering, trading in slavery, land-grabbing on a global scale. And the Spanish... etc,etc,etc, ad infinitum.
Somewhere along the line, you have to "man up", pick your chin up off the ground, and start moving ahead, moving forward. Forget about the past and the delayed rage. Raving on about social injustice and past ancestral sins is really pretty pointless, it doesn't "fix" anything, it doesn't make history go away, and all it does is incite further prejudice and hatred against generations that had no personal involvement in the origins of the dispute in the first place. That kind of negative thinking will never achieve anything respectable, unless you feel that stirring up further hate and prejudice is honourable and respectable conduct from an adult.