Expropriation Order Angers White Farmers in S. Africa

Conservative farmers have vowed protests after the government issued its first expropriation order Tuesday against a white farmer reluctant to give his land back to the original black owners.

Willem Pretorius received the order Tuesday requiring him to sell his farm, near the ultra-conservative town of Lydenburg in Mpumalanga province, to the government to return it to a community evicted under apartheid in the early 1960s.

South African law stipulates that the government must pay fair market prices for expropriated land.

The right-wing Transvaal Agricultural Union, or TLU, said farmers were infuriated by the expropriation and announced a protest meeting in Lydenburg for Friday.

“The TLU will . . . render assistance in order to resist this process of land theft,” TLU President Gert Ehlers said in a statement.

The TLU accused the South African government of “blatant racism” and compared it to Zimbabwe, where a land-grab sanctioned by President Robert Mugabe has resulted in the deaths of seven farmers.

As in neighboring Zimbabwe, white farmers in South Africa still own most of the arable land.

Thousands of black families were forced off their land under the apartheid government’s policy of enforced racial segregation. The government has sought to redress the land ownership imbalance since the end of apartheid in 1994.