A green paper detailing government's overhaul of the country's contentious land reform and land tenure policy and legislation was expected to be released by the end of May, Rural Development and Land Affairs Minister Gugile Nkwinti said on Tuesday.

The release would facilitate an open debate concerning a review of the land tenure system in South Africa.

Addressing media at a press conference in Cape Town, Nkwinti said that it had become necessary to review the Land Tenure Systems Reform policy as government did not have the required capital to complete the original programme, which stipulated that 30% of land to be under black ownership by 2014.

Implementation of the policy would cost an estimated R75-billion on a "willing buyer, willing seller" basis.

Besides government's financial constraints influencing the land reform policy, Nkwinti said that foreign-owned companies purchase of South African land was also a challenge to meeting the redistribution target. Foreign-owned companies were buying land at three times the rate of government, he said.

It was noted that, to date, 5,9-million hectares of farmland had been redistributed through the land reform policy.

But government had not set a new target for land redistribution. "We don't want a target now, because we have to balance between development and acquisition of land. We want to balance between the number of hectares we get and the extent to which we are able to use those hectares," said Nkwinti.

The focus would shift to recapitlising the farms that had already been redistributed, with R254-million having been set aside to recapitalise 200 nonproductive commercial farms already handed over to emerging farmers.

It was also noted that 90% of farms that had been redistributed to emerging black farmers were not functional and Nkwinti stated that government's "use it or lose it" land policy still applied to redistributed farms.

The 200 farms were just a start, and eventually the department would deal with all the farms that have been acquired since 1994.