SOUTH AFRICA: Just 3 per cent of white land has changed hands, writes Declan Walsh in Vaalwater.
The view from Louis Nel's porch has a movie-like quality. His hill-top house towers over the Limpopo plains, a majestic sweep of tree-studded South African veld. Below, leopards and other predators roam near fenced-off cattle "kraals", or enclosures.
Mr Nel - an archetypal farmer with shorts, freckled legs and a clump of chest hair - owns 1,200 hectares of this land. "I want to farm here until I die," he said one evening, watching the sun slip below the horizon.
It may not be that simple.
In nearby Vaalwater about 500 blacks live in squalid conditions in a ramshackle township. Their clan, the Matabane, inhabited Limpopo long before the first white settlers in the 19th century. Mr Nel's proud farm is rightfully theirs, they say. And now they want it back.
"I am praying to God for this land. We want to plough, we want to eat," said Catherine Mafifi (66), sitting on a bench near her tin shack.
With elections just one month away, South Africa's burning land question has come sharply into focus. It has touched a raw nerve between a minority of rich whites, who benefited under apartheid, and hundreds of thousands of landless blacks.
Simmering racial tensions were exposed last month, when a white farmer was arrested for feeding a black worker to lions in northern Limpopo. At the court hearing, protesters chanted "Kill the Boer, kill the farmer". But for the most part, land is a political issue that has drawn equally strong criticism from President Thabo Mbeki and the African National Congress (ANC).
The ANC government has devised an ambitious land reform programme to redress historical wrongs and tackle crushing poverty. So far, it has pleased nobody. Conservative white farmers describe it as ham-fisted, making dark comparisons with the chaos in neighbouring Zimbabwe. But for most poor blacks, it is advancing far too slowly.
A decade ago, Nelson Mandela pledged to transfer 30 per cent of white land to blacks within five years. Just 3 per cent has changed hands since, and the deadline has been pushed back to 2015.
"We are not going as fast as expected," admitted Glen Thomas, deputy director general at the Department of Land and Tenure Reform.
Unlike Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe forcibly seized thousands of white farms, South Africa's reforms are firmly rooted in the rule of law. A Land Claims Commission is processing applications for the return of black land stolen under apartheid. Of the 68,000 claims about 70 per cent have been settled, but mostly in urban areas.
Otherwise the government acts as middle-man between "emerging" black farmers, who want to buy land, and white farmers wishing to sell. The black farmers receive grants to help get started. The main farmers' organisation, AgriSA, says it is in favour of the scheme.
"We are the minority but we own the majority of the land. The reality is that we must redistribute," said spokesman Nic Opperman.
In fact many whites are keen to move on. The apartheid-era subsidies that propped up some farming have long disappeared, and crime is an increasing worry. Over 1,500 whites have died in violent attacks in rural areas since 1991. Mr Nel's mother was murdered at her home in 1994.
Some believe the attacks are racially motivated, but others say they highlight the deep gulf between rich and poor in one of the world's most unequal societies. "We understand that Rome wasn't built in a day. But the process of reconstructing our society must go faster," said Siphiwe Ngomane of Nkuzi Trust, a land rights organisation.
Only 500,000 of South Africa's 86 million hectares of commercial farmland had been transferred through the restitution programme by last January, according to Prof Ben Cousins of the University of the Western Cape. Even less changed hands through redistribution.
Money is one major obstacle. The land reform budget needs to be increased "at least four-fold" if the 30 per cent target is to be met, said Mr Thomas at the land department. But the other factor - political will - is more hotly debated.
President Mbeki has shied away from a more forthright approach to land reform, critics say, because he does not want to risk economic instability.
"It seems he is not interested," said Prof Cousins.
Also, some white farmers are resisting the changes. A recent book by Dr Peter du Toit, an Afrikaans lawyer with links to the hard-line Transvaal Agricultural Union, claimed the emergence of black farming has so far been a "complete failure".
"Giving land to people who don't know how to farm it is a waste of money and puts commercial farming out of business," he said. His claims infuriated the government, which promptly organised media tours of successful new black farms.
But the debate has raised questions about support for emerging farmers.
"It's very well to have a piece of land. But you need money, equipment and support to make it viable," said Prof Cousins.
Land has emerged as one of the greatest grassroots challenges to the otherwise popular ANC government. The Landless People's Movement, based in urban townships, has started a "No Land, No Vote" campaign in advance of next month's election. It has also threatened to launch farm invasions on polling day if its demands are not met.
Some of its most fertile recruiting ground is in the township of Soweto, an ANC heartland. "This government of ours is failing us. We voted for a better life that would benefit the poor; we haven't got it," said Ms Maureen Mnisi, a street sweeper and provincial chairwoman.
The sense of anger over land is being exaggerated, countered Mr Thomas. But he admitted that if not tempered soon "we could land in a crisis". The spirit of defiance is spreading to rural areas.
The Matabane clan in Vaalwater, for instance, say government officials have been promising them fresh land for the past seven years. Now the one-time ANC voters are planning to boycott next month's poll.
"If we don't get our land, we will not vote," said William Fatlane (71). "It seems that we have been neglected since 1994. What would we be voting for?"
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