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PRETORIA, South Africa (AP) - South Africa's government is for the first time moving to seize land from a white farmer, saying Thursday that negotiations to buy the property to hand over to black claimants were taking too long.
Blessing Mphela, a land restitution commissioner, said at a news conference that the seizure was a last resort, but he added that land transfers to redress the abuses of the apartheid era must speed up.
The government has repeatedly said it would rely on negotiated sales to shift agricultural land ownership rather than emulate Zimbabwe's seizures of white-owned farms, which many experts say contributed to the collapse of that country's economy.
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