Posted on 02/15/2007 8:55:22 PM PST by Tailgunner Joe
South Africa has seized its first farm - in the clearest indication yet that it is bowing to growing pressure to redistribute land to majority blacks.
Black pressure groups and trade unions have been threatening to begin invading farms unless the government moved quickly to redistribute land.
Among many of South Africa's 50,000-plus white commercial farmers, this first land expropriation by President Thabo Mbeki's government echoes Robert Mugabe's violent land seizures in neighbouring Zimbabwe where at least 4,000 farmers have been evicted from their land, leading to the collapse of that country's economy.
But among blacks dispossessed of their land in 300 years of apartheid, the move marks the beginning of a new era to correct skewed landownership patterns.
White farmers and white-dominated groups still control 90 per cent of prime farmland while blacks remain crowded in barren communal areas.
South African authorities have hitherto moved cautiously on land reform, fearing that any forced seizures will rattle investors afraid of a repeat of a Zimbabwe style situation.
Yet there is also growing recognition that equity in landownership within a reasonable time is unachievable without resort to some "strong arm" tactics to dispossess landowners who will not easily give up what they have already amassed.
The Commission on Restitution of Land Rights said in a statement yesterday that the first expropriation order of the gigantic 25,200-hectare farm owned by the Evangelical Lutheran Church of South Africa (ELCSA) in South Africa's Northern Cape Province came into effect on 26 January. The government will take full possession of the farm for resettlement next month. The government has paid £2.1m for the land although the ELCSAhad wanted more than £5m which it says is the true value of the land.
The fact that Mr Mbeki's government is paying compensation for the land has at least mollified analysts who deem it unfair to compare South Africa's land reform with Zimbabwe's. Maans Nel, spokesman of the main opposition Democratic Alliance said his party's position was that the state should only expropriate as a last resort where negotiations would fail. "There are a lot of other ways to get land... At least four million hectares are coming on the open market every year," said Mr Nel.
The South Africa government has recently hardened its stance on land reforms, accusing white farmers of frustrating negotiations by demanding high prices.
Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana announced last year that she was setting a six-month deadline for price negotiations with farmers after which any targeted farms would be expropriated. Mrs Xingwana has recently been engaged in harsh verbal exchanges with the white farmers after accusing some of them of sexually abusing farm workers and treating them like slaves. The government's critics, however, say white recalcitrance is not the only reason for delays in reallocating land. Bureaucratic sluggishness in negotiations is also to blame .
The ELCSA's farm has been expropriated under a land restitution law that allows blacks evicted from their ancestral lands during apartheid to apply to have their rights restored or to ask for financial compensation.
The church's land was claimed by 471 local families, among them workers on the farm. But the Transvaal Agricultural Union, which represents most white farmers, is against expropriation. One member questioned the principle that land should be redistributed to blacks saying whites took large areas of unoccupied land when they first arrived at the Cape in 1652 to begin their colonisation.
"There were no dispossessions. Our ancestors found vast areas of unoccupied land and introduced modern agricultural methods. Now we are being asked to give back that land. Why?" he questioned.
Such seemingly racist perspectives are widespread among a clique of hardline Afrikaners who still refuse to accept the reality of being ruled by blacks.
Beginning with the enactment of a Land Acquisition Act in 1982, Zimbabwe employed a rule-based method of land reform that stipulated that compensation must be paid for land and improvements. It was only in March 2000, when President Robert Mugabe's Zimbabwe African National Union Patriotic Front faced its first-ever real possibility of losing an election, that the Zimbabwean government endorsed land invasions. Up until then, land invasions were localized occurrences, and largely were deemed illegal. The Mugabe regime's sudden about-face aimed to secure the rural vote, which comprises Zimbabwe's largest voting bloc. The similarities between South Africa today and Zimbabwe in 2000 paint the South African government's expropriation in a more serious light. ...Zimbabwe will follow South Africa's land acquisition program closely in search of vindication for its program; Namibia, which faces popular demands to remedy the sizeable land ownership inequalities that have gone unresolved since the country's independence in 1990, also will be watching carefully. - LINK
How important is agriculture to the South African economy? It seems unlikely that it's as important to SA as it is to Zimbabwe.
Wow! Hope Basildon Peta likes his/her new utopia after all those 'racist' whites have been given theirs.
Zimbabwe Aid Live Concert. Coming soon.
I don't know what White person in their right mind would want to stay in Zimbabwe under that racist criminal dictatorship.
The inflation rate was 1,500% this week in Harare. You think they would see the handwriting on the wall in South Africa. But I guess they like famine and dire poverty better.
"There were no dispossessions. Our ancestors found vast areas of unoccupied land and introduced modern agricultural methods. Now we are being asked to give back that land. Why?" he questioned.
Such seemingly "racist perspectives" are widespread among a clique of hardline Afrikaners who still refuse to accept the reality of being ruled by blacks.
Racist Perspectives --- You have got to be kidding me.
Internationally, only their wine industry matters, but domestically, they might end up w/ famines if they give the land to people who don't know the difference between a shovel and a snow plow.
At this point I can't have much sympathy for any white farmers still in that third-world toilet South Africa. How stupid do you have to be not to see the writing on the wall, even if you've been in a coma during the past five years and missed Zimbabwe?
Time to invest in portable assets - like ocean going yachts and sailing vessels. When the stuff hits the fan you sail to the US and declare yourself a refugee, then sell the boat. The last time I looked the S. African currency export limits were very low.
What a weird sentence. What a distorted perspective. What a horrible place.
I would like to see historical evidence of such dispossession.
1971 : Idi Amin takes power in Uganda
One week after toppling the regime of Ugandan leader Milton Obote, Major General Idi Amin declares himself president of Uganda and chief of the armed forces. Amin, head of the Ugandan army and air force since 1966, seized power while Obote was out of the country.
Ruling directly, Amin soon revealed himself as an extreme nationalist and tyrant. In 1972, he launched a genocidal program to purge Uganda of its Lango and Acholi ethnic groups. Later that year, he ordered all Asians(mostly from India) to leave the country, and some 60,000 Indians fled, thrusting Uganda into economic collapse. A Muslim, he reversed Uganda's friendly relations with Israel and sought closer ties with Libya and the Palestinians. In 1976, he made himself president for life and stepped up his suppression of various ethnic groups and political opponents in the military and elsewhere.
In 1978, Amin invaded Tanzania in an attempt to annex the Kagera region and divert attention from Uganda's internal problems. In 1979, Tanzania launched a successful counteroffensive with the assistance of the Uganda National Liberation Front, a coalition of various armed Ugandan exiles. Amin and his government fled the country, and Obote returned from exile to reassume the Ugandan presidency. Amin received asylum from Saudi Arabia. He is believed to have been responsible for the murder of as many as 300,000 Ugandans, though he never stood trial for his crimes.
Amin died on August 16, 2003, in Saudi Arabia.
This doesn't sound so much different from some of the eminent domain thievery that's going on here.
We have monitored the situation in Zimbabwe very carefully, and will not make the same mistakes while doing the exact same thing in exactly the same way that Zimbabwe did.
As good Socialists, we learn from past experience.
Mass starvation is in store....
Everybody loves something for nothing, as long as they aren't the ones paying for it...and they never learn that they are the ones that WILL end up paying.
I suggest fertilizing your fields with a 50-50 mix of salt and borax, while their is still time. That is as close as you'll come to being able to hand it back as your ancestors found it.
Oh, and burn the buildings & equipment on the way out.
PS. I wonder what Charlise Theron will say when mommies farm is taken. I suppose she'll blame the Bush administration!
But among blacks dispossessed of their land in 300 years of apartheid,
1948-1994 is FAR from "300 years".
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