Well…looks like South Africa has decided to follow Zimbabwe, its African economic powerhouse cousin to the north, and start seizing farms. I guess we can expect a flood of new English teachers soon.
I hate to see this coming but I am afraid that South Africa is very near to becoming another “African” state. Not too impressed with some of the new leaders or their management abilities. Cronyism and corruption are really taking off. I figure it will take some time yet given the wealth already built up on South Africa to pillage it to a state of poverty, but it seemed as if it were only yesterday when many believed that they still had one more generation before things went to shit in Zimbabwe. Guess they were wrong.
Methinks this bodes ill for the peace & security of SA. This will not be met with the acceptance that has occurred in Rho…oops…Zimbabwe.
There are a number of companies and agencies who are quite well armed who have a serious stake in this not becoming the norm.
SA companies have too much invested to allow the same group of marxist terrs to run it into the ground.
Hate to say it, but I predict much unrest and violence.
And the ‘soccer teams’ will be wearing the necklaces this time.
South Africans continue to leave the country because they realize there is no future there. Over a 30 year period when enough leave or the old timers die out, I don’t think that you will see anyone fighting to keep it going. Another failed state to add to the continent’s long list.
Sigh, and I once took part in a demonstration in the apartheid times, where we enrolled the RSA booth on the Hannover fair with black plastic wrap. Was quite funny though.
Has someone white plastic wrap flying around somewhere for future use?
Yours wrappingly,
Bob
I have been back in South Africa for bout three weeks now and I don’t get the feeling that it’s going the same route as Zimbabwe. Although there are things I’m not happy about, great improvements have been made.
People who suppose that South Africa is deteriorating should bear in mind that even at it’s best, only 10% of South Africans under the previous Apartheid regime benefitted from its prosperity.
As far as the land issue is concerned, it would be wise to take in account that the farms that are being “seized” right now were first seized from their rightful owners over the past 353 years.
After my grandparents died and were buried on their farm in Natal under the Apartheid regime, their farm was quickly seized and given to its new white owners without any notice to the family. My aunt who was living in the house at the time was forced out and had to live in an abandoned vehicle. I’m thirty-four years old but I’ve never been to thee graves of my grandparents yet.
By the way, the farmers are being recompensated for the loss of their farms. However, I doubt whether they will be able to buy a same-sized farm for the same money.
One thing I am concerned about is that people who were dispossessed of their land under apartheid were able to farm, but the ones to whom it is being returned to have no or little knowledge of how to work the land.
Why did so many black Africans from SA’s neighbors move to South Africa over the past 60 years?
Didn’t the vast majority of SA’s black African population move there as a result of the Zulu migrations of the 19th century?
Exacty what happened in Zimbabwe. And as more of the white farmers flee and the food shortages begin, things will spiral faster and faster out of control.
I recall in the months after the Rhodesian government fell how everyone thought things could only get better. History has a very nasty way of repeating itself in the worst possible ways in Africa.
But look at the date that this farmer came into possession of this farm. I pretty much think that you won’t lose your farm unless it was taken from a black farmer during the Apartheid era. (touch wood)
Also, there is a lot of pressure on the government. Top management of companies and land ownership are still pretty much as white as it was pre-1994. At the time you could say but people weren’t qualified as they weren’t allowed education on the same level as whites blablabla, but it’s been more than 10 years. Surely they should have had a bit more time to rectify the situation? The government needs to start acting or they’re going to be faced with more and more unhappy voters.
That said, I do hope another Zim is not on the cards for SA.
This is from the same government that claims HIV/AIDS is a CIA plot.
Before the Mfecane had begun, Nguni tribes had already settled as far south as the Fish River. The rest of the coast all the way to Cape Town was Khoisan territory.
Certain Zulu tribes like the amaBhaca and the amaMfengu did move toward the Xhosa areas south of kwaZulu were they settled. Mzilikazi and the amaNdebele settled in what is called Zimbabwe today. Some (I think they are called the Ngoni) even went further north. The main thing is that the land had already been occupied by Africans for thousands of years and in the case of Khoisan areas for tens of thousands of years.
How have the people of Zimbabwe benefited from land distribution? It used to be one of the wealthiest countries in Africa. Now, they haven’t got a pot to piss in.
The South African government needs to concern itself with the realities of the modern world not righting old wrongs perceived or real. Land distribution can have positive effects for equitable economic development. Taiwan is the example most cited for this. But what’s the point of redistributing 1,200 acres to a bunch of families who are going to be asked to make a subsitance living off of it. Presumably no matter where they are now they are making a subsistance living. 1,200 acres of well managed land will return an income on international markets of about 200,000 to 250,000 USD. Think of the jobs and opportunity that kind of land can afford all South Africans. Poorly managed it’ll return stuff all and that’s what all Africans will get.
So they are going to take away this guys land. Who are they going to give it to? At least he is being compensated, not just attacked and forced to leave.
What a touchy subject…Imagine you buy a piece of land that someone ‘stole’ from a black (if I’m allowed to say black) farmer, and you didn’t know? And you spend your whole life, savings, energy into working it…and then you find out that 700 years earlier there used to be a Ndebele hut so you need to give it up?
I hope that there won’t be any riots. I remember the day we were sitting in school assembly, and our prinicipal said ‘This is your new president, this is your new anthem, and this is your new flag.’ We all just shrugged, and spent the rest of the day learning ‘Nkosi Sikelele Afrika’ without knowing what the words meant that were coming out of our mouths.
Luckily FW de Klerk spoke very calmly and assuring to everyone for a couple of weeks before it happened…maybe they can record his voice and drive through the streets like the recycling dudes here!
That’s exactly what I’m hoping…they’ll go after farms that they know were taken by force, e.g. this one was in the 1960’s, when the idea of farm ownership was already firmly in place. They’ll never go into the whole 700 years ago Ndebele farm thing…most of the black would have to give all their property over to the people who originally populated the South then.
There are more and more black farmers who are doing very well on farms…not all of them want to turn the land into subsistence farming.
Current land reform is severely behind schedule. The government at one stage promised to reallocate 30% of land to black farmers by 2015 and so far this hasn’t been happening. Of course, the government realizes that white farms bring in money from experienced farmers, but what can they do? People are demanding land. And they certainly have a right to it. Under Apartheid (and many whites either kept voting for Apartheid government parties or did very little to resist) Blacks weren’t allowed to own land. Their land was seized and redistrubuted to whites. Who often did pay for it, yes. But does that mean the farm now rightfully belongs to you?
The biggest thing that has been holding land reform back is that the government knows they have to stick around and train people to farm, and they lack the resources. Also, they are actually paying people for their land, and it’s difficult to work out a budget for that too, as well as deciding how much to pay.
When the Moors from Africa invaded the Iberian peninsular, the Iberians struggled against them until the last one was driven back to Africa. In South Africa, people are merely being partially recompensated for the land that was stolen by the Settlers over the past few hundred years. What are the chances of Africans going in droves to Europe to claim it as their own and getting away with it for hundreds of years?
There are a few posters who are in denial concerning who the land belongs to, but I would be too if I had to exchange my life of living of the fat of the land for working hard for my money.
However, Zimbabwe is definitely worse of than before even under Smith and the other ten White farmers who used to and still call it Rhodesia. I cannot stand Mugabe because he is exactly what justifies White domination in Africa.
This has always been the problem in Africa: the race thing. That is why Uganda got rid of the Indians, Zimbabwe and other places got rid of the Whites, Liberia and Sierra Leone got rid of the Lebanese. Problem is there do not seem to be many Africans that know how to run businesses and when they look with greed and jealousy to the successful “Other” owned businesses, stealing seems to be a good idea, but this in turn makes potential investors run off because they do not think that their property will be protected. So you see the results in one country after another. All becoming “genuinely African” again. So what’s it going to be this time? Take back all the white owned farms in South Africa and distribute them to the “Blacks” read: ANC politicians and their cronies to sit idle as luxury country estates OR give them to unskilled “Blacks” who have no idea how to run them? There certainly has been unfairness before BUT South Africa is no longer a nomadic society and with a population of over 40 million, people are not going to feed themselves by getting this land back to graze a few gazelles.
We have so many problems in Africa with people now demanding the UN and others engage in nation-building BUT how is that different from the colonialism that preceded it and then are we saying that colonialism was a good thing? even with all its racially superior overtones? Do we want Western governments “running” Africa again?
I see that all these examples you have mentioned are where certain groups have been expelled by African governments post independence, but you fail to mention real racism: Apartheid.
You’re out of touch with the realities of South Africa. many competent business people have emerged despite the Apartheid regimes hopeless education policy which was aimed at keeping the African in subjection for ever.
[Quote coming soon]
Right wing propaganda.
At a time in history Europe was where Africa is now. Without colonization and slavery we would all have been in the same boat today.
No longer in existence.
So what was Mbeki talking about when he excoriated the ANC for its corruption and patronage-based attitudes?
I completely disagree. We have seen standards of living, quality of life, and any other standard that you wish to measure a nation by drop precipitously falling indepedence and continue to get worse the farther from colonialism that these nations were. We have gone through the colonial exploitation (which incidentally built the mines, roads, schools, hospitals, ports, farms, factories, telegraph and telephone lines) and the aid dollars that continue to build and maintain these things, to neoimperialism to this, that and the other excuse. Slavery has been going on in Africa since time immemorable. Are you suggesting that only Western slavery had an impact on the continent? How would you compare that with the massive numbers of Europeans who emigrated from their countries? What is the difference?
I have been to every African nation except Libya, Somalia and Sudan over a 22 year period and I see Africa getting worse and worse and those “successes” that are trumpeted are merely relative to the huge declines that took place because of civil wars or economic dislocation NOT during the colonial period. I am not confident about South Africa. I understand why many people so desperately want to believe that this will work, but all indications from the region indicate that the chances are very slim. I hate to be a pessimist but when it comes to Africa, I have become numb to the incredible corruption, ineptitude, lack of foresight, violence, disease, poverty and ignorance that I have seen only mirrored in Haiti, Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands and to some extent in Guyana, Surinam and Bolivia.
In order to be the lucky recipient of a white man’s farm do you have to prove it was stolen from you personally, or is there going to be a generalised redistribution to anyone with black skin? How on earth is this going to work? Will this be supervised by the courts? How far back in time are they going to go? What good is this going to do? Wouldn’t it smack less of revenge if the government nationalised the farms and set up a management committee based on merit? Surely they are not just going to re-steal farms and give them to their cronies? What’s the fastest land animal? Does your chewing gum lose its flavour on the bedpost overnight?
More on SA “Land Reform”:
No, Miranda, you just have to be a crony of one of the kleptocrats (of which Mugabe is, of course, commander-in-chief).
http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qn4196/is_20021117/ai_n10834800
http://iafrica.com/news/specialreport/zimbabwe/216807.htm