JOHANNESBURG – South Africa will implement the “use it or lose it” principle to ensure resettled farmers maintain production at redistributed farmland, a government official said on Tuesday.

"You know, use it or lose it will work now, with the recapitalisation and development with the strategic partnerships we will form with farmers, whether active or retired," South African Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti told reporters in Cape Town.

"Our view is that give them a chance, establish a clear system of managing these farms, provide necessary support and those who do not want to work the land, take them (off). There is not going to be any compromise on that part. The only thing that we thought we should strengthen is the support."

Thousands of poor blacks are still waiting for the ANC government to deliver on its promise on coming to power in 1994 when it set itself an ambitious target of redistributing 30 percent of all agricultural land to the black majority by 2014.

But the huge cost of acquiring land – estimated at R75 billion for 82 million hectares of land – as well as problems in negotiating land prices under a "willing-buyer, willing-seller" policy have seen the government managing to acquire only 4 percent of land from private owners to date for redistribution, amid growing unrest among the poor landless blacks.

But instead of setting a new deadline, Nkwinti said the government has decided to focus on making redistributed land more productive.

"We don't want to target now because we want to balance development. We want to (create a) balance between the number of hectares we get and the extent to which we use those hectares to produce food."

Nkwinti who revealed last year that more than half the farms bought by government as part of its land redistribution had failed or fallen into decline, said on Tuesday more than 90 percent of the 5,9 million hectares of land the state bought for emerging farmers was not productive, and that the state was therefore losing revenue.

"More than 90 percent of those are not functional, they are not productive and therefore the state loses revenue. So we cannot afford to go on like that. We then say the agriculture sector's production as a proportion of the GDP is going down – this is part of the reason. That land has been given to people and they are not using it. No country can afford that."

South Africa – just like Zimbabwe – inherited an unjust land tenure system from previous white-controlled governments under which the bulk of the best arable land was reserved for whites while blacks were forced to crowd on mostly semi-arid and infertile soils.

But South Africa, which has one of Africa’s biggest farming sectors and its biggest economy, has repeatedly said it will not follow the example of Zimbabwe where President Robert Mugabe seized most of the farms owned by that country’s about 4 500 white commercial farmers and gave them over to blacks destroying commercial agriculture.

Two weeks ago a South African court dismissed a black community’s land claim because the community would not be able to meet production levels current white farmers occupying the farmland have achieved.

Farm seizures are blamed for plunging Zimbabwe – once a net exporter of the staple maize grain – into severe food shortages since 2001 after black peasant farmers resettled on former white farms failed to maintain production because the government failed to support them with financial resources, inputs and skills training. – ZimOnline