South Africa gives white farmers six months to sell

South Africa has told its white farmers they will risk losing their land if they fail to agree on acceptable selling prices for black resettlement within the next six months, the first time the country has set down such stringent rules for land reform policy.

Lulu Xingwana, the new agriculture minister, said the government would no longer spend time negotiating with white farmers of whom she accused of not being committed to the empowerment of black people.

Speaking at a weekend agricultural briefing, Ms Xingwana said white farmers had a deadline of six months, by which time they should negotiate fair prices for their land or risk compulsory eviction.

"We are now going to negotiate for six months and no more ..." said Ms Xingwana. "We will no longer waste time negotiating with people who are not committed to transformation."

President Thabo Mbeki's government has accused white farmers of demanding exorbitant prices for their land, in effect slowing down the pace of land reform and the restitution of farms taken from black people under apartheid.

Until now, South Africa had been cautious about giving its white farmers, who number more than 50,000, an ultimatum in the land reform process.

The chaos seen in Zimbabwe, where a similar tactic was employed to disastrous effect, has acted as a deterrent from such severe policies, and encouraged the government to opt for a "willing buyer-willing seller" model of reform.

But Ms Xingwana complained that this option was no longer workable because of the reluctance of white farmers to give up their land for prices the government considered to be reasonable.

Her department had already identified several properties that would be the first to be expropriated if the government could not reach agreement over prices with the white owners, she said.

Attacking the new policy as an "unacceptable" move that would serve no purpose other than to stir racial tension in post-apartheid South Africa, the country's largest farmers' union yesterday rejected the ultimatum. Lourie Bosman, the president of AgriSA, said any land seizures would be challenged by aggrieved farmers in the courts.

"It irritates the process because farmers are normally willing to co-operate, and that is my experience. There are some instances where there are disputes, but I think there are ways to handle that," he said.

"It is unacceptable because the consequences for an open economy is devastating. We have a good economy now, but what will it do to investment, to property security?"

Mr Bosman's sentiments are shared by the main opposition Democratic Alliance (DA), which blames the government, and not farmers, for the slow pace of land reform. The DA said many farmers who had tried to sell land to the government had ended up giving up on the idea because of lack of co-operation from reform officials.

The government has set itself the target of transferring 30 per cent of productive farmland from white to black hands by 2014. But, so far, only 4 per cent of land has been dealt with, and analysts say far more money - at least £200m annually - needs to be spent on land reform if this aim is to be achieved.

President Mbeki's government has previously assured the world that it would not copy Zimbabwe's catastrophic land reforms that have prompted the economic collapse of the country under Robert Mugabe. South Africa's struggling neighbour now has an inflation level of about 1,000 per cent and an unemployment rate of 80 per cent.

Since 2000, President Mugabe has evicted about 4,000 white farmers and replaced them chiefly with cronies from his ruling Zanu PF party. But even yesterday Mr Mugabe refused to admit his land reforms had failed, warning during an address marking Zimbabwe's independence, that he would soon begin re-possessing farms from the same black farmers to whom he had allocated seized land.