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South Africa must spend some $2.05 billion to resolve outstanding land claims by blacks in an effort to reform land ownership in the formerly white-ruled country, the government said Tuesday. Agriculture Minister Thoko Didiza also acknowledged to reporters that the cost of completing the return of land legally claimed as part of a "restitution" process since apartheid ended would make it hard to meet a 2005 deadline. "We will need around 13 billion rand ($2.03 billion) to resolve just the restitution," Thoko Didiza said after a meeting of the country's Commercial Agriculture Working Group, which includes the country's main farming organizations. That would comprise a big chunk of planned spending for the 2005/06 budget, estimated in the last official budget at $64 billion. A decade after the end of apartheid, most commercial farmland in the continent's biggest economy remains in the hands of minority white farmers. Land reform is seen as vital if the forcible seizure and redistribution of lands undertaken by Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe are to be avoided. South Africa has long asserted its land reform process will be conducted in an orderly, legal and transparent manner. The main aim of the reform is to ensure that 50 percent of farmland is in black hands by 2014 -- with 30 percent directly owned and another 20 percent leased. [more

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