South Africa renews apartheid land claims process

South Africa has relaunched a claims process for black families removed from their land under apartheid rule to apply for compensation, the presidency said on Monday.

President Jacob Zuma signed into law a return of the Restitution of Land Reform Act, which includes an extended deadline for people who lost their land to make a claim.

“The Act now provides for the re-opening of the lodgment of land claims by those who missed the 31 December 1998 deadline,” a presidency statement said.

The process will run for five years starting at the end of June, it said.

The law builds on a previous process that saw the examination of 80,000 requests for compensation, but which expired before all those who had been forcibly driven from their land had a chance to lodge a claim.

The 1913 Natives’ Land Act allocated just 10 percent of land to non-whites — later upped to 13 percent — which led to the expulsion of hundreds of thousands of blacks, systematised after 1948 under apartheid.

The government estimates as many as 400,000 requests for compensation could be made at a cost of between 130 and 180 billion rands ($12-17 billion , 9-12 billion euros).

White South Africans — around 10 percent of the population — still own as much as 80 percent of the land 20 years after the end of apartheid.