[Huber]

Is this an isolated incident as suggested by the article, or the beginning of a trend similar to current events in Rhodesia (ok "Zimbabwe"), or Venezuela by Robert Mugabe and Hugo Chavez, respectively?

According to CNN: http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/09/23/southafrica.farm.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

"The deputy president said last July that the government wants all land restitution claims settled within the next three years. The government, she said, seeks to deliver 30 percent of the country's agricultural land to people disadvantaged by apartheid by 2014. If necessary, she said it would revise the current willing buyer, willing seller principle.

South African officials have repeatedly said they do not plan to emulate Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's seizure of white-owned farms, which many say contributed to the collapse of that country's farm-based economy.

But Mugabe's policies have made him hugely popular among black South Africans, while land reform here appears stalled."

Either way, it seems like a heck of a negotiation lever for one side to take unilateral action if it does not like the pace of negotiations.

[Huber]

http://www.cnn.com/2005/WORLD/africa/09/23/southafrica.farm.ap/index.html?section=cnn_latest

[Maceman]

The South African government says it will expropriate a white-owned farm, following a failure to agree on a price. The move is seen as an indication the government plans to speed up its lagging land reform programs.

Too bad this didn't happen last April. That way Stevens, Souter, Kennedy, Ginsberg and Breyer could have cited this foreign "precedent" to justifying their "reasoning" in Kelo v. New London.

[Mrs. Shawnlaw]

Lacey Clay is tryng to get this same thing started in Pierce City MO.

[Ursus arctos horribilis]

Zimbabwe #2 appears on the horizon.