S. African Land Reform to Lift Curbs on Blacks

In what President Frederik W. de Klerk called “a turning point in the history of South Africa,” the government on Tuesday unveiled detailed plans to abolish laws that have segregated housing and restricted black ownership of land for 78 years.

But the government immediately drew sharp criticism from anti-apartheid leaders for deciding that, “in the interests of peace and progress,” it would not return land to the 3.5 million blacks forcibly removed from their property over the years.

“To return land to its original owners would open up a quagmire,” said Stoffel van der Merwe, one of De Klerk’s leading Cabinet ministers. He added that the government intends to correct the wrongs of the past by helping blacks buy available land rather than forcibly redistributing property currently in white hands.

However, the African National Congress, the leading black opposition group in the country, contended that the effect of the new laws would be to “codify the present state of dispossession, under the cover of free-market proposals.”

“The ANC believes that in order to rectify the gross imbalance in landownership, redistribution cannot be left simply to the market,” it added in a statement.

The far-reaching land proposals, expected to be rubber-stamped by Parliament by June, would scrap 189 laws and empower the president to ax another 15,000 regulations that discriminate against black ownership of homes and land.

In a statement, the government said it has decided “that race and population groups should no longer be a qualification for the acquisition of land rights; that exclusive areas for specific races are, therefore, done away with.”

“We are changing the whole picture,” Van der Merwe told reporters. Or, as a headline in afternoon editions of the Star newspaper put it Tuesday: “Anybody Can Live Anywhere.”

The legislation would repeal the Group Areas Act, which for 40 years has prohibited black homeownership in areas reserved for whites, and it would abolish apartheid laws dating to 1913 that have restricted blacks, who outnumber whites 5 to 1, to 13% of the country’s land.

The new laws, fulfilling a promise De Klerk made in a speech to Parliament last month, would make more than a million acres of farmland available to blacks at subsidized prices. And black farmers would for the first time gain access to financial aid available to white farmers.

They also would grant property ownership immediately, without additional charge, to 1.2 million blacks who currently hold 24- to 99-year lease agreements on the property beneath their homes. An additional 1 million plots would be converted once surveying is completed.

Another provision of the land reform package would ease restrictions on creating new towns to open the way for large-scale, emergency housing. The government estimates that more than 2 million blacks are homeless.

Addressing white concerns that neighborhoods will deteriorate once blacks move in, the government plan would allow communities to establish local “norms and standards”--laws regulating such things as overcrowding and noise. But it would prohibit any local laws that discriminate against residents on the basis of race, color, creed or gender.

However, the laws would not prevent white landowners or landlords from discriminating against black buyers and renters, so long as racial restrictions were not incorporated into title deeds or lease contracts.

“We’re getting rid of all discriminatory legislation and helping blacks become farmers,” Hernus Kriel, the government planning minister, said in an interview. “But we are also saying that the present rights of people should be respected and protected. That’s the basic.”

In its document introducing the new legislation, the government said it is “totally opposed to any form of redistribution of agricultural land, whether by means of confiscation, nationalization or expropriation.”

The ANC says the new laws, while significant, would do nothing to redress decades of discrimination against blacks.

“I don’t know how this can be called land reform,” said Aninka Claassens, a member of the ANC Land Commission. “They say the way forward is going to be on existing title deeds. But those are based on forced removals” of blacks from white areas.

“This is going to create terrible anger among black people,” Claassens predicted. “And the forcible removal of 3.5 million people isn’t something that happened in the distant past. It’s a reality for people now.”

Kriel said the government rejected suggestions by the ANC and others that a land claims court be established to determine the rightful property owners.

“How far would we go back?” Kriel asked. “Ten years? A hundred years? Back to 1652 when we (whites) arrived here? Back further, when tribes in this country fought each other for land?

“Mistakes have been made,” Kriel added. “But we cannot start the world all over again. We have to have a cutoff point. We believe that cutoff point is today.”

The issue of redistribution of land will be a key item on the agenda when the government, the ANC and other political groups in the country begin negotiations for a new constitution.

“We think we will be able to convince the other participants in the negotiating process that this is a fair and equitable way to handle a very, very emotional and difficult problem,” Kriel said.