White Farmers Protest Forced Land Transfer

Angry white farmers in South Africa held a protest Friday in support of a colleague facing the first forced expropriation of land that had been confiscated from blacks during the apartheid era.

Several hundred farmers from the right-wing Transvaal Agricultural Union rallied in a conference hall in Lydenburg, about 175 miles northeast of Johannesburg, to show their opposition to what they called “blatant discrimination and racism” against whites.

On Tuesday, the Land Claims Commission served notice of expropriation on farmer Willem Pretorius, giving him two months to leave his nearly 3,000-acre cattle ranch and farm after the state assumes ownership Tuesday.

The property will be given to about 600 families of the Dinkwanyane community, which was forcibly removed from the land in 1957 by the white-minority apartheid government.

South Africa’s land redistribution program has been slow and relatively smooth, with most restitution disputes settled through negotiation. Pretorius’ case threatens to open the floodgates for other landowners dissatisfied with compensation. TAU officials warned that the way the government had decided to confiscate Pretorius’ land created a precedent that would be difficult to overcome.

“Emotions are high, and the farmers are very upset about it,” said Jack Loggenberg, TAU chairman for labor and land. In a telephone interview from Lydenburg, in Mpumalanga province, he said more than 400 farmers had turned up at the gathering to pledge support for Pretorius and contribute money to a legal fund established to fight land claims.

Another farm in Mpumalanga, in the same province, is slated for expropriation pending approval by the Agriculture and Land Affairs Ministry. TAU officials said their surveys indicate that about 8,000 individuals or communities have filed claims for some of the province’s best commercial agricultural land.

Millions of blacks were forced off their property under apartheid. Since 1994, the government has sought to redress the landownership imbalance. The law allows for the eviction of farmers who refuse to sell.

“There is an enormous disparity,” said Wallace Mgoqi, South Africa’s chief land claims commissioner. “The government has a responsibility to ensure there is equity in the distribution of land.”

“Expropriation is a valid and legal mechanism that survived the rigors of multi-party pre-democracy negotiations to find a place in our constitution,” added Zakes Hlatshwayo, director of the private National Land Committee, which hailed the expropriation order.

For the last eight months, Pretorius has resisted the government’s offer to buy his farm for about $109,000; he wants $272,000. He has eight months to appeal the seizure to the Land Claims Court.

“I am going to fight by all means until I get what my farm is worth,” Pretorius said this week.

Two evaluators were appointed to determine the value of his farm. The second was named after the first did not take into account huge loans and subsidies granted to white farmers under apartheid and thus overvalued the farm, said Alida Barnard, a spokeswoman for the government’s Commission on Restitution of Land Rights.

The amount that Pretorius is seeking is the higher of the two estimates. Barnard said the farmer had dismissed the option of hiring a third, independent evaluator.

Mgoqi, the land claims commissioner, said the TAU had been pooling resources for the past month in anticipation of fighting the government’s land acquisition plans, and he insisted that Pretorius’ case had been blown out of proportion.

He noted that since 1995, 12,120 land restitution claims had been settled through negotiation and that the government had no intention of changing this strategy.

But TAU officials charged that the government is pursuing tactics similar to those of neighboring Zimbabwe, where militants and squatters have occupied about 1,700 white-owned farms. Zimbabwe has said the occupations are justified because of unfair land distribution and has called on Britain, the nation’s former colonial ruler, to pay the bulk of the compensation demanded by the white farmers.

Mgoqi dismissed the comparisons to Zimbabwe.

“We have a process here that respects the rule of law,” Mgoqi said. “Even this act makes provision for the person being expropriated to make a counteroffer and to approach the Land Claims Court for it to adjudicate on the fairness or otherwise of the offer.”