Posted on 09/28/2005 6:36:18 PM PDT by blam
Homeless victims of South Africa's great eviction
(Filed: 29/09/2005)
A million black workers have been thrown off white-owned farms since apartheid. David Blair reports on the threat of a Zimbabwe-style backlash
Almost a million black workers have been evicted from South Africa's farms since the advent of the "rainbow" nation's new democracy, more than during the last decade of apartheid.
A new survey has disclosed the huge scale of an enforced upheaval sweeping the country, with 942,303 farm workers and dependants evicted in the 10 years after the transition to black rule in 1994.
In the previous decade, when apartheid was still in force, 737,114 were removed.
Virtually all the dispossessed labourers once lived and worked on white-owned farms. Today, they form an army of the uprooted and impoverished, pouring into squatter camps and townships across South Africa.
Elliot Lekoaletso, 67, was forced to leave his home on a white-owned farm four years ago. Now he is reduced to living in two shabby rooms adjoining a pigsty, while the veldt of Knotted Roots farm, his old home, is roamed by herds of zebra, eland, springbok and wildebeest.
"I can't forget that place because I grew up there," said Mr Lekoaletso. "It has many memories for me. If there was a way of going back, I would go back. But what can I do?"
He moved to the farm as a six-year-old in 1944 and worked there from the age of 11 until 1989, when both his legs were amputated after severe illness and infection. Mr Lekoaletso's mother and sister are buried on Knotted Roots.
He left four years ago when the new owner, Willem Maritz, cut off his water supply. He had been living on the farm with his sister, 71, his brother, 72, and his three grandchildren, aged 11 to 19.
Mr Maritz, who bought Knotted Roots in 1997, ordered Mr Lekoaletso to pay a monthly water charge of £9.
"He drove up to my place. He did not get out of the car and he ignored my greeting," said Mr Lekoaletso.
"He said, 'Are you still living here?' I said, 'Yes, this is my place'. He said, 'For this month, you must pay 100 Rand for water, or you must go'. I felt very let down because I was expecting a good man."
Mr Lekoaletso stopped paying after a few months. Mr Maritz duly cut off the water supply and sent his foreman to order him and his relatives to leave.
According to Marc Wegerif, one of the new study's authors, a minimum wage and new legal obligations for farmers help account for the huge number of evictions. South African landowners also face intense competition from Europe's subsidised farmers.
Now, instead of growing crops or running cattle, they are turning estates into wildlife reserves and evicting workers to make way for game.
The mass eviction of black labourers risks provoking a popular backlash against the country's 50,000 white farmers.
If the farmers are to secure their long-term future and avoid the fate of their counterparts in Zimbabwe, campaigners say they must accept greater responsibility for the welfare of all those who live on their land.
About 85 per cent of commercial farmland is white-owned and only three per cent has been handed over to blacks since apartheid's demise.
If farm workers continue to be dispossessed in large numbers, the government would find it far easier to justify taking tougher measures against white farmers.
Mr Maritz, who has turned Knotted Roots into a "guest farm" complete with conference facilities, said he was entitled to ask for a water charge from a tenant.
"They were using a lot of water and they weren't paying for it," he said. "Where you live, if you don't pay for your water, they cut you off."
He added that Mr Lekoaletso's relatives had joined him on the farm and he was afraid of a burgeoning squatter camp appearing on his land.
Told that Mr Lekoaletso and his grandchildren were living beside a pigsty, Mr Maritz replied: "It's not my problem. I did what I could for them, but I couldn't keep supplying them with water for nothing."
He added: "They felt they should be given something for nothing. That's a problem with a lot of black people. Because they were previously disadvantaged, they feel they should just have things given to them."
A few miles from Knotted Roots is a squatter camp filled with workers evicted from other farms. Joseph Mabote, 56, who lives in a shack with his seven children, said he was still waiting to benefit from the "new" South Africa.
"I have the feeling that the white farmers feel they can do what they want and I have no power to stop them," he said.
Ping.
Looks like the Telegraph is laying the groundwork propaganda for the anti-white eviction/pogroms that are coming.
So the reason that Thabo wouldn't criticize Bobby is because he is going to turn South Africa into Zimbabwe. Well, that should work out fine.
How long before the Communist ideologues in power make their move? That's the only question. Does anyone doubt that at some point they will decide to institute collectives and force the "white colonists" out?
It may take 20 years...but the Zimbabwe experience is coming to South Africa. It wouldn't surprise me to see several major technology companies there...start uprooting operations and moving to South America or eastern Europe. You can start watching for economic trends to go downward...and they can blame anyone they want. There is no halt to this. Its the way that leadership has chosen to go...so its a done deal. I wouldn't waste alot of time thinking about it. Pack and go now.
If I were there, I certainly would. Any idea what the white emigration figures are?
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