WITH the fine aim of redressing the racially skewed pattern of land ownership that has existed since whites conquered South Africa hundreds of years ago, the government's land-reform programme is a shambles. Launched in 1994, the plan was to redistribute 30% of white-owned farmland to poor blacks. So far, barely 5% has been handed over. The government has run out of money. Once-productive land lies fallow. The deadline of 2014 for completing the reform has been postponed; 2025 has been mooted but even that may be too ambitious. The estimated extra cost is 71 billion rand ($9.4 billion) on top of 6 billion already disbursed.
Unlike Zimbabwe, where over the past decade white-owned farms have been seized by President Robert Mugabe's government without compensation, South Africa's post-apartheid governments have stuck to the principle of “willing seller, willing buyer” at the market price. But, as President Jacob Zuma has admitted, that model is not working, partly because of its huge cost. The government talks ominously of other “practical strategies” to acquire land “more quickly and inexpensively”, sending shudders through South Africa's 40,000 white farmers.
When apartheid ended 15 years ago, 87% of commercial farmland was owned by whites and 13% by blacks—the exact reverse of their proportion of the population. (This excludes the subsistence farms where 4m black families eke out a living.) The 30% target, adopted in 1994 by South Africa's first democratically elected government, meant redistributing 26m hectares (64m acres) of white-owned land with a deadline of five years. So far, less than 3m hectares have been transferred.
Under a separate land-restitution programme to compensate victims of forced removals over the past century, a further 2.5m hectares have been returned to their dispossessed black owners. If this is included in the 30% target, over 5m hectares, nearly a fifth of white-owned land due for redistribution, are now in black hands. The government admits that about half the farms taken over by blacks have failed, usually because of a lack of money or skill. Some put the failure rate at 70%. Since 2007 the country has been a net importer of food, after decades of self-sufficiency.
Meanwhile, white farmers with outstanding claims on their land do not know whether to continue investing in their properties. Some have gone bust while waiting for government payment. Others have abandoned their farms. Spurred by attacks on white-owned land, many are thinking of farming elsewhere on the continent. Several African governments, eager to boost their own farming output, have been signing deals with South African farmers. Agri SA, the white farmers' biggest union, says 600-800 of its members are already operating in other African countries.
The murder rate on South African farms is striking. Since 1991, 1,650 people, most of them white farmers and their families, have been killed in more than 10,000 attacks. According to a study in 2003, the main motive in 89% of the murders was robbery. A political or racial motive was found in only 2% of the cases, though Pieter Mulder, the deputy agriculture minister, who heads a right-wing party, Freedom Front Plus, is unconvinced.
Despite the government's flagging land-reform plan, there seems little chance it will resort to large-scale expropriation at below-market prices. That would prompt long legal battles, making the whole process even slower and costlier. Besides, the recession-burdened government faces more pressing demands, such as the provision of basic services to the country's increasingly turbulent poor black townships. Mr Zuma still cites land reform as one of his five top priorities. But it no longer has the same urgency.