The South African land and agiculture minister has issued a six-month ultimatum to white farmers to settle apartheid-era land disputes with dispossessed blacks or risk having their farms seized.
Lulu Xingwana's office has blamed white farmers for delaying the redistribution plan by demanding exorbitant prices for their property.
The ANC-led government has rejected any comparison with Zimbabwe's violent land redistribution program in the late 1990s, and stressed that its land reform programme will be orderly.
Local law allows the minister to seize land without a court order, but farmers have recourse to an appeal.
South Africa has promised to put a third of the commercial farming sector in black hands by 2014, but 12 years after the fall of apartheid only 4% of the industry belongs to the black majority.
