Posted on 06/13/2004 3:07:43 AM PDT by Tailgunner Joe
WHITE farmers in Namibia are increasingly divided over how to respond to the government's plans to expropriate some of their land, with a splinter group urging members to fight to stop the process.
A group of 30 farmers met at the eastern town of Gobabis this week under the banner of the Namibia Farmers Support Initiative and agreed to pool resources to prevent the state from dealing with individuals. They expressed fear that if they ignored the plight of individuals, the Namibian government would deal with all of them singly, as had happened in Zimbabwe.
While the main farmers' body wants to continue talks with the state, a faction has started mobilising farmers to fight the plans through court actions, marches and international campaigns.
"We will fight for what our ancestors gave us so that we leave it for our children," said George Friedrich, one of the conveners of the meeting.
Friedrich said they had decided to fight land acquisitions, and to expose what he described as government's efforts to discredit farmers.
The farmers expressed disappointment with the Namibia Agricultural Union. They claimed that the union had failed them.
"They told us that farms would not be expropriated. What is happening now? How can we believe them or the government any longer," said one farmer.
Sigi Eimbeck, from the farmers' support initiative, said they were not opposed to expropriation, but to the way the Namibian government was handling the issue.
He said the initiative would expose Namibia's political agenda to the world and claimed the preidentified farms were to be used as payment for Lands Minister Hifikepunye Pohamba's election as Swapo's presidential candidate.
Lands ministry spokesman Chrispin Matongela said yesterday the comments were unbecoming and bad for Namibia. "It is a real big problem when people make such remarks, especially since they are also directed at the head of state (President Nujoma)," he said.
The government, through the information ministry. was considering what action to take, he said.
Namibian union threatens to seize farms - "If the white colleagues do not want expropriation of land, we can always introduce a new method - which is taking the land without compensation and without sharing it with them, by force," said Alfred Angula, general secretary of the Namibia Farmworkers' Union. ..."We of NAWFU are sending a serious warning to Sigi Eimbeck and his followers not to provoke the Namibian people"
"Mugabe used the farms as payment to chiefs who instructed their subjects to vote for Zanu-PF. Are we here also not on the same path?"
"The whites in this country and in South Africa were never tired of war. The whites in this country were asked by political parties in 1978 to join the interim government," he said, adding that anyone giving credit to Swapo for winning the war was "siende blind en horende doof" (blind while having eyes and deaf while having ears).
I guess white people who have lived in Namibia for generations don't count as "the Namibian people."
This is how it started in another racist country last century. It was called "The Nuremburg Laws."
Well Namibia was home to German nazis while it was a German colony.
Germany lost Namibia after WWI, before the nazis ever existed.
They still had a presence there, and having them in Southern Africa didn't stop the Nazi presence there. It didn't stop them from dividing up three ways either, Windhoek for the white people, and I forget the two other cities one for the Coloured people and one for the blacks.
ping
Should white Namibians have their property expropriated so it can be given to blacks?
Why do you ask me that?
because I want to know your opinion.
Okay fair enough. I do post extensively about Zimbabwe on the same issue and thought you were familar. No absolutely not. If it was property that could actually be proven to have been owned by someone else then the government came and took it for white people (see Group Areas Act in SA) then that's different. However I am against this policy of land grabbing which I just see as a communist tool to get land for the eventual Chicom occupiers.
Sorry, have to differ with you on this one. The Nazis were never there, at least not what I learnt in the history classes while at school in Namibia. They tried to infiltrate during WW2, but never got close. The colored people are the descendants of the early German settlers who intermarried with the local Nama, Bushman and in isolated cases, the Damara people. The chose to settle in Rehoboth in the mid-south, after early skirmishes with the Hereros from the Northeast. Windhoek started as a German missionary outpost. The history of Namibia is a lot "cleaner" than most of the other colonies. More than 50% of the population, the Ovambo tribe, lives in the very far north, and have very little interest in vacating the fertile Kunene valley. There was really very little in terms of seperate cities and homelands, like in SA.
Okay thanks for clearing that up. That is why I pinged you.
One question I just thought of...how was Namibia different since they had apartheid also? Or was it not as 'enforced' as South Africa's policies were.
It was defintely not enforced as much as SA. The fact that the country is so sparsely populated also contributed to the fact that there was ample space for everyone, until now, it seems.
Well it seems like Chinese influenced communism is playing a hand in southern African politics. Commies make apartheid look like fun.
As the most technically advanced, and productive parts of Africa, they still depend heavily on European (read white) management and capital, and African labor. However, what is coming is a wholesale, expropriation of white-owned property, expulsion-if-you're-lucky, or outright massacre of white people (already begun). Yeah, Apartheit was bad, but the payback is going to make it seem like an episode of Uncle Remus.
My prediction: The next colonial empire the planet will see is the formation of what in reality will be UN colonies, in all but name. Join me in praying that comes in time to prevent more genocidal massacre in all of Africa
I think the Chicoms will make life such that apartheid will be look like a picnic IMHO.
President Reagan was right in saying that they will lie, cheat, and do whatever to advance their cause including practicing racial divisiveness onto a society.
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