South Africa says can't meet land reform target

South Africa’s land reform minister said on Friday it would be impossible for the government to meet its own target of acquiring farm land to restore to blacks after it was taken from them during apartheid.

After the fall of apartheid in 1994, the African National Congress-led government set itself a target of handing 30 percent of all agricultural land to the black majority by 2014.

“We cannot talk anymore about acquiring 30 percent of land (by 2014). It’s just not practically possible,” Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti told an agriculture conference.

The government said last year it had so far managed to transfer 6 percent of land to blacks.

Land reform is a sensitive issue in South Africa and has been brought into focus by the decline in agriculture in neighbouring Zimbabwe, where white commercial farmers were often violently evicted by President Robert Mugabe’s government.

Source: Reuters