S. African Panel to Study Return of Land to Blacks : Reform: The new commission will only make recommendations, but it marks a government retreat.

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa — The South African government, trying to head off more bloody clashes between blacks and whites over land, agreed Monday to set up a commission to consider returning property to the hundreds of thousands of blacks it has forcibly moved over the years.

The new commission will only make recommendations to President Frederik W. de Klerk, but it represents a retreat for the government and marks the first time in South Africa’s history that blacks will have a place to lodge their land claims.

Hernus Kriel, the government’s planning minister, said the government at first opposed a land commission but reconsidered under strong pressure from white liberals in Parliament and anti-apartheid groups.

“The government still (believes) that a program of restitution is not practical or financially viable,” Kriel said. But he added that the government is “not insensitive” to people or communities who have been “possibly disadvantaged” in the past.

The creation of the commission, expected to be approved by Parliament by the end of June, represents a partial but nevertheless significant victory for Nelson Mandela’s African National Congress and other groups representing the country’s 28 million voteless blacks.

And it also is likely to temporarily ease tensions between white farmers and thousands of blacks who already have defied the law by moving back onto land taken from them by the government.

Riot police had to step in a week ago to stop nearly 1,000 angry farmers from driving a group of 400 squatters off land near Ventersdorp. The squatters, forcibly removed by the government a decade before, returned a few months ago to claim the land, which has been leased by the government to white farmers.

“Clearly, this is a government concession and a great improvement,” said Aninka Claassens, a member of the ANC panel studying government land proposals. But she added that she is worried that it leaves too much decision-making power in the hands of the white government. The ANC had wanted an independent land court to have final say over title deeds.

De Klerk drew worldwide praise with his decision in February to remove two pillars of apartheid--laws that prohibited the black majority from buying land in 87% of the country and a law that segregated neighborhoods by race.

But De Klerk’s advisers later said the government would not give back the land that had been taken from blacks.

More than 3.5 million blacks have been forced from their homes and off their land over the years, often at gunpoint and usually with meager or no compensation. Most were moved onto less productive plots in the black “homelands,” far from jobs in the cities.

Several hundred thousand blacks were removed from so-called “black spots,” areas where blacks actually held title deeds. Others were removed from property owned by the government or white farmers. Most land taken from blacks in the productive heartland or near cities still is owned by the government and rented to white farmers.

Two months ago, in announcing its plans to remove land discrimination, De Klerk had urged the country to forget the wrongs of the past and let bygones be bygones. The government even sent letters to white farmers, assuring them that their title deeds are safe.

The ANC argued, though, that by taking no steps to correct the injustices of the past, the government was guaranteeing white minority control of most of the country’s land for generations to come. Such a move would only entrench apartheid and white privilege, the ANC said.

The land commission had been proposed by the Democratic Party, De Klerk’s liberal white opponents in Parliament, which maintains that land has been unethically--although not illegally--taken from blacks. A commission, Democrats said, would be able to offer fairer compensation to black victims of apartheid, although probably not restitution.

The government says the commission will be multiracial and will be responsible for, among other things, advising De Klerk on “the orderly allocation of land with due regard to claims by persons disadvantaged.”

Planning Minister Kriel warned, however, that the government could not follow all the commission recommendations, which could include buying land from whites and returning it to blacks.

“We cannot give a blank check for the purchase of land,” he said. “The country cannot afford it.”

Although the commission is unlikely to please all the blacks who have land claims, its workings will temporarily take some heat off the government.

Blacks who already have reoccupied their land may agree to leave, pending land commission decisions on their claims, ANC officials say.