GSBot

South Africa will miss a 2014 deadline to redistribute a third of the country's farmland from white farmers to the black majority, officials say.Thozi Gwanya, from the land reform department, told the BBC the deadline had been pushed back to 2025 because of a lack of funds.

He said more than $9.6bn (£5.8bn) was needed to buy the remaining land.

So far more than five million hectares have been distributed and about 20 million hectares remain to be bought.

But much of the land that has been handed over has since lain idle.

Earlier this year, the government warned that it would take over any allocated land that was not being used effectively.

At the end of apartheid in 1994 almost 90% of land was owned by the white community, who made up less than 10% of the population.


Land reform is a sensitive issue in South Africa and has been brought into sharp focus by the decline of agriculture in neighbouring Zimbabwe, where many white commercial farmers have been violently evicted.