Delegates at the Land Summit on Sunday rejected land reform policy based on the willing buyer/willing seller principle.

"The summit took a resolution to say that needs to be done away with. Government must come up with another mechanism...that is not a simple thing," Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Thoko Didiza's spokesperson Steve Galane said.

Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said at the start of the summit on Wednesday that the principle was slowing down land reform.

She told delegates the principle would have to be revisited as the state was the only buyer, and farmers often asked exorbitant prices for their land.

Didiza also raised concerns about the concept saying the state should be allowed to influence how the markets work.

Galane said delegates also recommended that a land tax be put in place and that the December 31, 1998, deadline for lodging restitution claims needed to be reviewed as some people had failed to meet it.

"All these things are still recommendations, government will respond to these and will come up with a position," Galane said.

As land redistribution was being hampered by foreigners buying land in South Africa, Galane said delegates had proposed a moratorium be imposed on the practice.

The government wants all land restitution claims settled within the next three years, and 30 percent of agricultural land to be delivered to the previously disadvantaged by 2014. By December 2004, only three percent of commercial farm land had been redistributed.

Most of the opposition political parties and bodies representing white farmers at the summit were against scrapping the willing buyer/seller principle.

AgriSA director Hans van der Merwe said it was reasonable for land owners to expect a market-related price for land they had to part with, and this was best determined by the willing buyer/willing seller principle.

When the democratic government took over in 1994, 87 percent of agricultural land was owned by whites. Since then 1.2 million people have benefited from land reform. By the end of June this year the country's land restitution programme had settled 62 127 of the 79 000 claims made.

On the redistribution programme, 3.1 million ha of land had been delivered to rural and urban communities.

Sapa

SA economy South Africa is the economic powerhouse of Africa, with a gross domestic product four times that of its southern African neighbours and comprising 25% of the entire continent's GDP.

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