South Africa's government was urged on Tuesday to implement an immediate review of its land reform policies in a hard-hitting report from a leading think-tank that said the current approach had a dismal record and threatened to lead to a crisis. Without a rapid and thorough change of policy towards reversing the injustices of land ownership under apartheid, agricultural production, investor confidence, race relations and the future of the poor were all under threat, the paper found. The report, based on three years of research, was written by Johannesburg's Centre for Development and Enterprise, South Africa's most respected policy centre for social and economic development. In view of the record of the ruling African National Congress in tackling land inequality since the end of white rule in 1994, the country's land reform policies had two possible trajectories, the report said: "nobody wins' or "everybody loses'. However, it also suggested that if the government worked with agribusiness to resolve the near-impasse over land restitution, a crisis could be averted. The report came against the backdrop of an increasingly acrimonious debate over the state of the government's attempts to reverse the effects of the colonial law of 1913 which set aside about 80 per cent of land for the white minority, and the subsequent expropriations. The ANC has set a target of redistributing 30 per cent of agricultural land to black farmers by 2014. But the CDE found that between the publication of its last report in 2004 and the end of last year, redistribution had increased by less than 0.5 percentage points, from 4.3 per cent of commercial land to 4.7 per cent. The CDE found that the other big plank of the government's policy, restitution of land to the dispossessed, was also running into trouble. While almost all urban claims had been settled, most rural claims remained unresolved, leaving tracts of prime agricultural land in limbo, the report said. "Restitution claims are stretching over vast swaths of land, including 50 per cent of South Africa's sugar land, causing it to be frozen,' said Ann Bernstein, the head of the CDE. "You can't lend on it or improve it. And aspirant black farmers are also being hurt by this. They can't buy it.' Under pressure from both the landless poor and the farmers, the government has conceded that there is a looming crisis. Another big area of concern, the government has admitted, is the collapse of many of the farms that had been handed back to communities. The CDE argues that a big part of the problem is the shortage of qualified officials to oversee the policies, compounded by an apparently instinctive hostility to working with business to overcome the difficulties. Agricultural businesses and most farmers were in favour of addressing the problem, said Ms Bernstein, but "offers are being spurned'. "Business is saying it is committed to land reform, eager to participate to make this a success, but is deeply concerned about the lack of skills to buy land, to negotiate with the private sector and to resolve issues that are not really problematic.' Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2008