Bielefeld, Germany, 13 March (ENI)--Churches, their allied development groups and governments of countries in Southern Africa should hold a round table to discuss the problems of land reform and rural poverty in the region, participants at a seminar in Germany have heard.

The Rev. Christian Hohmann from the office for mission, ecumenism and world affairs of the German Westphalian Evangelical Church, who made the round table call, spoke to Ecumenical News International after attending a seminar on land reform in Southern Africa, held at the Bielefeld-Bethel Ecumenical Centre.

The seminar, from 9 to 11 March, focussed on land reform and rural poverty in Namibia, South Africa and Zimbabwe in Southern Africa. The gathering was under the auspices of the Westphalian Evangelical Church.

Participants heard that, following the abolishment of apartheid, in the 12 years after the first universal suffrage elections in South Africa, and in post-colonial Namibia and Zimbabwe, it had become clear that without joint efforts, problems of rural poverty would not be solved.

Hohmann told ENI that a minority of white farmers with colonial roots to Britain, Germany and The Netherlands still owned more than 80 per cent of the commercially farmed land in South Africa and Namibia. At the same time, in South Africa more than five million black farm workers were heavily disadvantaged and lived in poverty.

"Only a small portion of land has been returned freely to the black people in Southern Africa who were originally there," Theo Kneifel, a Roman Catholic theologian from the Ecumenical Agency for Advocacy Work on Southern Africa, told the seminar.

Participants heard that European churches and mission organizations had received farms from former colonial governments, and still owned most of them. The seminar was also told that these farms represented land expropriated from black African people, who were then resettled or forced to work the land, first sometimes as slaves, and then later as lowly paid farm hands.

Those attending the meeting heard that achieving justice is a complicated matter. On the one hand, there are white farmers who have owned and cultivated the land for generations. Some share the income from the lands with their workers, and employ both black and white farm labourers. However, there are also black people who are highly educated in agrarian economics, and who know modern farming. They are also staking a claim to the land these days.