The department rejected as "malicious" recent media insinuations that the country's land reform process would go the "Zimbabwean route".
This follows Minister Lulu Xingwana's announcement in Limpopo last week that government would no longer negotiate selling prices with land owners for longer than six months.
Thereafter expropriation could take place, but as a last resort.
Xingwana said the ultimatum was in a bid to have all outstanding restitution cases resolved by the deadline of 2008.
She said most farmers delayed the process by challenging the validity of the claims and refusing offers made to them by government.
"There are many farmers we have been negotiating land prices with for more than four to five years without success," Xingwana said on Friday. About 89% of all claims lodged countrywide were settled by February this year. This means about 71 589 claims out of the 79 696 that were lodged, have been settled.
Of the 8107 outstanding claims, 6975 were in rural areas while 1132 were in urban areas.
But with regard to the entire land reform programme, the department said over the last 12 years, only four percent of land had been delivered to blacks.
Government has since resolved to review the willing buyer/willing seller principle, identified as the main contributor to the slow pace of land reform, including "delaying tactics" such as prolonged negotiations.
Government aims to transfer about 30% of the country's land to blacks by 2014.
Spokesperson for the Minister Eddie Mohoebi said the country's land reform programme was a constitutional obligation governed by the Restitution Act.
He said the law stipulated what and how the minister could implement the restitution process including expropriation.
"Our courts have the jurisdiction to declare any steps taken by the Minister outside the legal framework to be ultra vires and therefore unconstitutional," Mohoebi said.
In terms of the Restitution Act 22 of 1994, section 42E as amended, the Minister has the power to expropriate land for the purposes of land reform. - BuaNews
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