Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, March 13, 1991 TAG: 9103130005
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL PAGE: A-2 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CAPE TOWN, SOUTH AFRICA LENGTH: Medium
Whites would continue to own nearly all South African land under five new laws that would replace present apartheid policy.
Under the new laws, people of all races would be free to buy land and live where they wanted.
But anti-apartheid groups said the plan was inadequate because it rejected giving back land to blacks who were forcibly removed. They said little would change because most blacks would be unable to pay market prices for property.
President F.W. de Klerk called the plan a turning point in South African history. The proposals are designed to meet de Klerk's promise last month to scrap all remaining apartheid laws.
The country's 189 apartheid laws relating to land purchase and ownership in rural and urban areas are expected to be fully or partially scrapped by June, the Planning and Provincial Affairs minister, Hernus Kriel, told a news conference.
After that, he said, there will be no racial restrictions to the purchase of land. The plan also would wipe out the Group Areas Act, ending racial segregation of residential areas.
The African National Congress and other anti-apartheid groups expressed dismay and anger at the proposals. Opposition groups contend whites seized land that belonged to blacks and that major redistribution of land is necessary to correct past wrongs and ensure equal rights in the future.
"Until the present government recognizes the reasons for the present situation and commits itself to rectifying the wrongs of the past, no attempted land reform can ever hope to win legitimacy or credibility from the majority of our people," the ANC, the largest black opposition group, said in a statement.
"It is illogical and insensitive to expect us to buy the same land we were dispossessed of," said the Pan Africanist Congress.
by CNB