Has anyone read "The Great South African Land Scandal"??

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Good news, only two more chapters and conclusion!
Chapter XV should be of more interest to some of you who may or may not be interested in the the plight of farmers a half a world away but how about scientific discovery???

Chapter XV, part 1:


Chapter XV THE ROAD TO POVERTY - DISTURBING TENDENCIES

Many aspects of life in South Africa have a direct bearing on successful agricultural production.

Until the present government Mandela's African National Congress) came to power, South Africa was not only a leading player in agricultural research in Africa but indeed in the world. Many of its institutes were world famous - Onderstepoort for example was South Africa and Africa’s most prestigious veterinary science research institution. South African scientists were lauded throughout the world (as were South African doctors and other professionals) for their dedication, skill and innovation. It looks as if this has come to an end.

A report entitled “Onderstepoort in Crisis” (1) named important scientists who had fled the institute:

• Dr. Frank Vreede, a molecular genetics expert who left for Europe. He specialized in controlling gene expression by manipulating animal responses to vaccination to optimize immunity.
• Dr. Mandy Bastos, a molecular epidemiologist who specialized in foot and mouth disease. She played a large part in tracing the origin of the disease.
• Dr. Kelly Brayton, molecular parasitology expert, now in Washington. She had trained in the techniques needed for parasite whole genome sequencing.
• Dr. Etienne de Villiers, a bio-informatics expert, is now in Nairobi. Bio-informaticians are essential computer experts who analyse the masses of genome sequencing data.
• Nico Gunter and Henriette Macmillan, both cellular immunologists who worked on vaccine development. They worked on understanding how animals control infections with parasites that live inside the animal’s cells.
• Dr. Mary Louise Penrith, a head of pathology after 10 and a half years at the institution, left for Mozambique.
• Dr. Leon Prozesky, veterinary pathologist and head of pathology, had extensive experience in performing post-mortem diagnoses of tropical diseases.
• Dr. Theo de Waal, veterinary parasitologist, was head of the parasitology department. His expertise was in tropical parasites in domestic animals. He is now in the United Kingdom.
• Dr. Albie van Dijk, a virologist and previous head of the biochemistry department. He developed vaccines against tropical viral diseases such as African horse sickness and bluetongue. He is now in Australia.
• Dr. Gavin Thomson, internationally recognized expert in foot and mouth disease and rabies. Previously the director of Onderstepoort, he now works in Nairobi as an international consultant in the disease.
• Dr. Durr Bezuidenhout was an expert in heartwater disease. This disease is a tick-borne disease and is a killer of cattle, sheep and goats. He took early retirement.
• Dr. Janusz Paweska was head of the virology department with experience in tropical virological diseases of animals and man. He is now a consultant on Ebola fever in Central Africa.
• Dr. Jan du Preez was head of the technology transfer department, which is now closed.
(This report was dated May 3, 2002. It is possible these scientists are not currently working where the report stated.)

In August 2003, Dr. Fred Potgieter told the world that the institute’s scientists were “deeply demotivated”.(3) He criticized the appointment of researchers for two-year periods, saying research was a long and diligent process which could be adversely influenced when researchers worked with a sword over their heads. A researcher in the institute’s tuberculosis unit resigned because of this two-year problem, and the institute now has no researchers in this important field.(4) It was the only institute in the country which investigated TB in, particularly, buffalo breeding projects. At the time of this report, Dr. Gerhard Verdoor of the Endangered Species Trust declared that TB is already a big problem in South Africa. Many buffalos in the eastern part of the country have TB, he said. Lions and other predators then become infected after eating the carcasses.(

Up to May 2002, Onderstepoort had already lost almost 200 years of experience through resignations. The mentality that funding research of “non-profit undertakings” is not acceptable had clearly won the day. Money dried up and salary increases were far below the norm.

People said they left because of this, but researchers with whom we talked declared it was virtually impossible to work for people who were not scientists, who knew nothing about science, and who did not understand long-term thinking. This bleeding of exceptional people was all the more tragic given that Onderstepoort has been at the forefront of South African veterinary science since 1908. In mid 2002 already, several departments had closed - the departments of information technology, bacterial vaccine development, ostrich diseases and marketing. Many middle-level researchers with specific expertise had left.

The situation reached crisis proportions in late 2003 when researchers from the ARC’s thirteen institutes took to the streets in protest. For scientific South Africans to take this type of action is highly unusual, but they were watching years of achievement being destroyed before their very eyes. The thirteen ARC institutes throughout South Africa cover all there is to know about agriculture and animal care, from tropical and sub-tropical crops to animal nutrition, to soil, climate and water research and plant protection. There are 81 branches of these institutes throughout South Africa.

In August 2003, Dr. Fred Potgieter, acting director of Onderstepoort’s veterinary services, was suspended for talking to the press about the parlous situation at the institute. On Friday 31 August 2003, this expert with 31 years experience, was ordered to leave his office.

Over the past ten years there has been a drop in researchers of 51%. Forty percent of researchers with a doctor’s degree left the ARC during the past year.”

The biggest decline was at Onderstepoort and three other institutes. These four institutes are doing critically important work in order to improve the quality of food produced in South Africa. In order to make the food safe, they needed to work at full capacity. Since 1993, there was a decline in the number of researchers at these four institutes of up to 74%.

Management appears to be “totally unmoved” by this decline, said Solidarity. In fact, they are in denial that there is even a problem. The consequences of this decline are serious. The diagnoses of animal diseases will not be conducted, and there may be an outbreak of diseases that cannot be identified. (Italics ours). “South Africa is at the moment playing dangerously with tuberculosis. The last TB researcher at Onderstepoort resigned last month”, declared Solidarity. TB is transmitted to people through unpasteurised milk. It is one of the worst transmitted diseases in South Africa and is especially deadly for people with HIV/Aids.

“Furthermore, the more than 1,5 million small farmers in South Africa can suffer badly if they don’t get support from the ARC to build up their herds and improve their crops”, continued Solidarity. The union demanded a commission of enquiry into the deterioration of the ARC. The union’s actions were supported by organized agriculture throughout South Africa.

Agricultural research in South Africa is at a crossroads. Not one of the ARC’s institutes can claim to be without a flaw of some nature. Staff employed by the ARC has declined from 4 800 in 1994 to 2 554 at the end of March 2003. Employees at the ARC no longer see a future for themselves. These people are approximately 30% behind their public service colleagues in terms of salaries.
Private sector organizations are shifting their contributions to other research facilities, since the ARC can give no guarantee that long-term research projects can be brought to a successful conclusion. Funds for specific research projects are closely linked to specific researchers. If they leave, the funds follow them.

Decision making has been centralized at head office. Many opportunities are lost because the decision-makers at head office are unfamiliar with conditions at the coal face. The distrust has grown, and the level of victimization of employees deserves scrutiny. The brain drain must be halted, or all of South Africa will lose. Furthermore, there is a huge gap in salaries between researchers and new appointments. Secretaries at Central Office receive equal and more than researchers with M.Sc. qualifications and many years of service. There has been a dramatic increase in the number of secretarial and administrative staff at Central Office.

In the meantime, the bleeding continues. The situation vis a vis food production and safety could become dangerous. A toxin has been discovered in a fungus growing on peanuts. This can cause liver cancer. Peanut butter is one of the basic ingredients supplied in the government’s school feeding scheme, but the peanut butter researcher has resigned. There is thus nobody to monitor this situation. Further, the researcher monitoring bacterial and toxic residues in meat has resigned.

We were told that snap inspections of abattoirs have stopped. State veterinarians usually collect samples of meat at abattoirs and send these samples to the ARC. But there is no one left to analyse these samples, and the consequences of this hardly need elaboration. The meat researcher told us he left because “he couldn’t stand it any more. There is no research money, no promotions, no long-term thinking. There is only one nutritionist left. There is no research on the nutrition of animals for food safety for South Africa. Humans will eventually suffer,” he said
 
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Chapter XV, part 2:

The ARC tried to kill the messenger when it suspended Dr. Fred Potgieter, said Solidarity. The organization is destroying research in South Africa. Other African countries are concerned because they depend on the ARC to keep their livestock and plant life thriving and healthy. Anthrax is a huge problem with cattle in Africa, and Onderstepoort helped numerous countries to fend off this disease.

Mr. Guy Robinson, president of the Zambian Agricultural Union said that his country’s agriculture will “sink” without the assistance of the ARC.(10) He said South Africa had an “unbelievable responsibility” towards Africa’s livestock with vaccines which Onderstepoort manufactures. Robinson said a few years ago Japan had given money to Zambia to build another Onderstepoort in that country, but the buildings stand empty because of a dearth of money and expertise. Zambia is one of the countries which desperately needs vaccines because of a high incidence of lung sicknesses in cattle. “The whole area is in danger if we don’t have vaccines”, said Mr. Robinson.

South Africa supplied Tanzania, Zambia and Botswana with vaccines.

We don’t know what will happen. Judging by the couldn’t-care-less attitude displayed by various government ministers to other problems in government, we don’t expect much from the Department of Agriculture. If affirmative action is more important than scientific expertise, then Heaven help us. It appears as if this is the case.

MUNICIPAL TAXES FOR FARMERS

When one thinks of it, this phrase is a contradiction in terms. Farmers do not reside in municipalities, unless of course one lives in South Africa where the new government stretched the boundaries of municipalities to include farm properties, thus widening the tax net to include people who are sitting ducks for the tax collectors. In this gerrymandering process, the government downsized the number of municipalities from 800 to 284. Concomitant with this “restructuring”, administrative systems went to pot. The country’s municipalities have descended into the shambles predicted by those who warned against this government move.

This process of widening the net has not helped. Indeed, things are worse. South Africa’s municipal debt climbs every year – in April 2003, Finance Minister Trevor Manual announced it had reached the R24 billion mark, increasing by around R1,8 billion a year. Funds must be found somewhere to pay for the millions who use municipal services but do not pay.

Professor Johann Kirsten of the University of Pretoria says the proposed land tax as outlined in the Bill will not generate much revenue, and will damage the global competitiveness of South African farming.(1) He believes the income earned will not even cover the total cost of valuing land and collecting the revenue. “It is only at 4% or higher that this tax will make economic sense, but then all profits or returns from land will be taxed away. Nobody will want to farm.” (Italics ours).

A tax on agricultural land will lead to a considerable drop in the value of the land, says Professor Korsten. It will also lead to a reduced investment in improvements. The average return on agricultural land is 5% - not very attractive to any investor. Crops, vineyards and orchards are already taxed through income tax. Sometimes these crops are of more value than the land on which they grow.

Some South African municipalities, including the Nketoana Council, began to levy taxes on agricultural land, including unused land, even before the Property Rights Bill had become law! Desperate to cover their exorbitant arrears, badly-run municipalities saw the farming community as an easy target.

The government could have stopped the municipalities from acting illegally if they had wanted to. It was again up to a private citizen (financially backed by organized agriculture) to take a matter to court. The problem should have received government’s attention from the beginning.

The court’s ruling does not outlaw land taxes, but it does set a precedent.

Let us take a closer look at what can be expected in the way of “service” from South Africa’s municipalities, many of which have virtually collapsed since the new government came to power.
One of the main problems is the question of huge salaries granted to themselves by inept and sometimes corrupt councilors. The Tshwane (Pretoria) municipal salary structure is mind-boggling – top officials earn between R672 000 and R775 000 per annum.

But let us start with Johannesburg, once billed as the “diamond of Africa”. “City Revenue Department must confront its chaos – over one million people complaining about the billing shambles in Johannesburg” shouted a headline.(3) One resident received an electricity bill for R70 000. A Sandton mother dumped her washing on a Johannesburg councilor’s desk after her water supply had been cut three times, despite regular payments.

Electricity thieves are costing Johannesburg a fortune while families are left in the cold and dark as a result of their actions.(5) An official said this was the result of the theft of underground cables and the illegal use of electricity. Electricity supply fails with regularity in many areas of Johannesburg, leaving people without the means to cook and even see properly.

In December 2002, Johannesburg mayor Amos Masondo announced a R2 billion write off of arrear rates and taxes – approximately 16% of the city’s total annual budget.(6) He said the debt was owed by liquidated companies, poor residents who could not afford to pay, inaccurate information about debtors and untraceable debtors.

At the same time, yet another scheme was put forward to rejuvenate a tired, dirty city that nobody goes to anymore. A variety of “renaissance” plans have come and gone, said one observer(12), while Johannesburg continues its slide into slum conditions. Certain inner city “social projects” collapsed under the weight of non-payment and mismanagement . Of eight housing projects established since 1996, only one survived.

A little north of the city, the Hillbrow area has become known as Little Lagos. Nigerians control the town, and drugs are their business. We can be sure very few rates and taxes are paid there, and collecting arrears would be a life-threatening job.

Meanwhile, people are stealing the water meters.(18) From February to August 2003, 1 760 water meters were stolen, leading to thousands of litres of water being washed down the drain. Johannesburg Water, the company responsible for the city’s water supply, set up a hotline to deal with the vandalism. “The thieves are stealing the metal meters installed ten years ago. They sell the brass to scrap dealers for R10 each”, said a spokesman. It costs the company about R200 to install a meter.

Emergency services in the city have apparently fallen prey to a mafia-type cartel.(19) The result is there are only three emergency-response cars and 24 rickety ambulances to serve 2,8 million people. “The ambulances are reduced to half in the rainy season because the roofs of some of the vehicles leak”, declares a media report.(20).

Pretoria/Tshwane

Scandal permeates the administration of one of South Africa’s most beautiful cities. Revolutionary cleric Father Smangaliso Mkatshwa moved very smartly into gravy-train mode when he became mayor. He lives in a palatial mansion which cost R2,5 million while using his housing allowance of R39 000 to pay off his private home in Edenvale on the East Rand.
His managers’ salaries run from R775 000 to R692 000 per annum. Recently his council had to pay millions of rand to get rid of an incompetent city manager who was described as arrogant and who failed to deliver.(21) Mr. Thoahlane Thoahlane earned R830 000 a year, yet demanded a payout of R9,5 million. He “only” received a R3 million handshake.

After his suspension in January 2003, he continued to draw his monthly salary of around R70 000 while boasting in a local Pretoria newspaper that he was busy “enjoying my golf while earning a good salary every month”.(22) Thoahlane’s brief stay at the council (two years of a five year contract) was preceded by a short stint at the National Development Agency where he also got a golden handshake. His exit there was shrouded in controversy.

For this money, what do Pretoria’s residents receive in return? Efficiency is not at the top of the list. At the end of 2002, R1,8 billion was owed by electricity users. The net growth per month of this debt is R15,7 million.(23) In February 2003, it was reported that R83,9 million of water “disappeared” during the period of the book year 2001/2002. The Tshwane Metro also could not give an accounting of why R98,5 million worth of electricity also disappeared.(24) These figures represent 20% of the water and 12% of the electricity’s total distribution.

So what is mayor Mkatshwa doing about this shambles? He’s busy organizing the change of names in the city. While the city’s pipes and structures collapse because of poor maintenance, Mr. Mayor is planning “large-scale” name changes, at a cost of R16 000 at each facility.
 
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Chapter XV, part 3:

And the rest of South Africa? Just a few examples. In a town of just 35 000 registered voters, the council manager has awarded himself a R630 000 per annum salary. The council of greater Wolmaransstad is so bankrupt, it hasn’t enough money to repair the potholes in the main street. If it were not for money received from the provincial government, the town would have ceased to function. Despite this, Mr. Elie Tsietsie Motsemme, 38, the well-paid town manager of this beleaguered council, has given himself a whopping salary increase of 20% from the end of 2003. The council’s salary bill is 81% of the council’s total income. There is not enough money left over to do even the basic maintenance work, said the assistant town manager.

Eight ANC councilors in the Kungwini (Bronkhorstspruit) municipality have been implicated in various irregularities including the taking of bribes and the misuse of public funds.(29) At the Klerksdorp City Council in October 2003, the majority ANC party told the opposition DA that it would be a “cold day in hell” when it supported the ousting of executive mayor Dr. Magome Masike.(30) He was asked to resign because the council’s finances were a “disgraceful shambles” and because the mayor had neglected his duties to Klerksdorp. DA councilor Peter de Jongh charged that the mayor had embarked on “wild and speculative ventures without consulting council, that the council’s investments had dropped from R69 million to R35 million in six months, that he had allowed consumers to accumulate R190 million in debt for services, and that the National Treasury had rejected the budget and returned it to the council. But it will be a cold day in hell before anything happens to him!

(It says something for the governing party’s accountability that party loyalty stands above all else, including the bankrupting of a once-functioning city council.) Forcing increases on ratepayers to pay for presidential salaries and luxury cars were among the council’s “multitude of mistakes” said councilor Ted Hart.

In the nearby township of Tembisa, meanwhile, there have been no service bills “for years”.(32) “Pay what you think you owe us”, the council told residents of the Hospital View area of the township. These residents are non-existent on the council’s data base, although they get serviced every month. (Note: the farmers have not been told to “pay what you think you owe us”. Wouldn’t that be nice!) In other parts of Tembisa, rats terrorize residents. The rodents “emerge” from piles of uncollected rubbish and “harass us”, say the residents. Last year, the township was without a refuse-collection service. The previous black empowerment collector had his contract nullified when it was discovered he had no equipment with which to collect rubbish.

West of Johannesburg is the historic town of Krugersdorp, now named Mogale City. Every month the ratepayers pay R11 000 for the mayor to lease a luxury car. The metallic-blue BMW four-wheel drive is more expensive than the mayoral car of Johannesburg. Mayor Lentswe Mokgatle recently decided his R1,5 million house was too humble, and received R3,6 million to purchase a more luxurious residence. This town of only 300 000 residents (many of whom do not pay tax) must now set aside R215 400 to maintain this estate. Mokgatle also owns a home in Sandton for which he has also been granted a subsidy.

The municipal salaries bill is putting a damper on economic growth and fuelling inflation, said Trevor Manuel, Minister of Finance.(35) He said municipalities had spent about 32% (R19,8 billion) of their operating budgets on personnel in 2002/3. This compared with only 19% a few years ago. Further, municipalities are not budgeting for repairs. This finding was published by the SA Local Government Association on July 14, 2003. The report said repairs and maintenance are still well below the 10% norm of total expenditure.

Is it any wonder farmers baulk at paying municipal taxes? Apart from the fact that urban dwellers have grounds for real complaint about the wastage of their hard-earned money on lavish salaries and accommodation (with poor concomitant capacity to handle the job for which they are paid), farmers will receive little or nothing for their contribution to this profligacy.

For decades, South Africa’s farming community has been protected by the Commando system: deriving its name from the old Boer military formation, the Commandos traditionally consisted of civilians with military training being called up for service when and if necessary.
South Africa’s efficient commandos are to go. The number of commandos vary, from 50 000 to 70 000, according to different sources. Whatever the figure, the commando system of the South African National Defence Force or the part-time component of the military will be phased out “because of the role it played in the apartheid era”, according to Safety and Security Minister Charles Nqakula.

Nqakula said the commando system did not have the “level of acceptance” by the public that it ought to have.(2) He said the commandos would be replaced by a new unit of the SA Police Service (SAPS) which would be responsible for border protection and national key points. He claimed part of the responsibility would be farm safety.

The South African countryside is “chillingly violent”, says Jonny Steinberg, author of the book on a farm murder Midlands.(3) Policing on the ground is often incompetent, always woefully thin. Who is to protect the settlements of the hinterland, both black and white, he asks.

The commandos are to be replaced, inter alia, by a police reserve. Many of the recruitment criteria – a matriculation certificate, a driver’s licence, passing a psychometric test – are to be dropped.

Freedom Front leader Pieter Mulder warned President Thabo Mbeki that the South African countryside was “the most dangerous in the world”, and that the president’s decision would leave many millions of rural dwellers totally unprotected from the thousands of heavily-armed gangs which terrorize them.(6) More than 20 000 of the commandos are not white South Africans, so President Mbeki’s statement that the commandos are “mainly white structures” is incorrect. Around 300 people of all races out of every 100 000 population are now being murdered on South African farms, both commercial and subsistence.

In the broader South Africa, says Mulder, about 55 out of every 100 000 people are murdered each year. Compare this to six out of 100 000 in the United States and 2 out of 100 000 people in Europe. Farmers feel betrayed by Mbeki’s decision. Some communities benefited almost exclusively from commando protection. The commandos have been traditionally used in rural areas to assist under-resourced police to combat crime.

The commando system goes back to 1715 when part-time volunteer commandos were established to safeguard the community in the Cape.

What is the state of the South African Police Service, the people who are being mooted to replace the commandos? The government has promised 30 000 people to help with farm protection. How is the SAPS run? What is the personnel capacity of SAPS members? Can they do the job they are paid to do, and are they paid enough? Can South Africa’s commercial farmers depend on the SAPS to defend them in crime-ravaged rural areas?

From all reports, the SAPS is badly run, under-staffed and poorly capacitated. Altogether 366 people died in a nine-month period in 2002 “as a result of police action or while detained in police custody”. The SAPS Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) announced this in Parliament in March 2003. Seventy-three percent of these were found tortured in police holding cells in Durban, KwaZulu/Natal alone. An enquiry was launched in 2002 into alleged police misconduct at Nyanga police station in the Cape after officers were caught sleeping on duty.(10)

Police dockets are regularly stolen or destroyed. The police are often involved in robberies, hijackings and burglaries. Police vehicles are misused, and police run shebeens while on duty. Politically correct appointments sometimes leave good people unpromoted. The Institute for Security Studies reported that there were five and a half times more inspectors than constables in the SAPS.(11) Sergeants and constables comprise only a third of the total police force when they should be in the majority. (This reveals an attitude that the police force is a salary cash cow to be milked). Australia, Britain, Canada and the US have one sergeant for between four and six constables, but in South Africa there are 5.1/2 times more inspectors than constables. For sergeants to constables, the ratio is nearly four to one. Despite these promotions, the country is still short of quality policemen. At station level, for example, 60 percent of personnel do not have driver’s licences.

T
 
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Chapter XV, part 4:

wo policemen were arrested at Philippi Police Station for allegedly issuing firearm licences to people not entitled to them, such as gang leaders.(13) “Child raped while in Police Care” reads a headline.(14) A policeman under criminal investigation was transferred to the Child Protection Unit where he raped a 14-year-old girl he was supposed to be assisting. A Pretoria motorist was shot dead by a policeman after a heated verbal exchange on a road. The officer was arrested and detained and appeared in court.

There are numerous problems with the public calling the police emergency number 10111. A Germiston, Gauteng woman was ignored when she called this number on behalf of her seriously-wounded husband. He had been shot, and she rushed him to various police stations where she said officers refused to help her.(16) Passers by eventually took the man to a hospital, where he died of his injuries. Complaints against the police have increased markedly. The ICD received 217 complaints of deaths in police custody and 311 deaths resulting from police action in the 2003 financial year.(17) A report tabled in Parliament stated that these were among the 4 443 public complaints received within its mandated period in 2002/3. This is 38% more than the previous financial year.

Reports of police malfeasance are daily occurrences. Policemen held on bribe charges(21); evidence in murder case “lost” by police(22); 921 service weapons lost in one year by police(23); killer cop sentenced to 18 years (he murdered a suspect)

A Free State police captain Vincent Tebogo Makoko was arrested on charges of helping and supplying weapons to gangs of African youths who were attacking local farmers(25). The entire management team at the Gugulethu Police Station in the Cape were replaced because of public complaints about poor service and violence at the station, including an assault on a journalist which blinded him in one eye(26). The police were accused of robbing illegal aliens instead of arresting them(27). According to one of the victims, he was robbed of all his money during a raid at Rosebank, Sandton but was afraid to lay a charge because of his illegal status.(28)

There are 38 000 illiterate and semi-literate police officers in the SA Police Service.(29) Twenty five percent of police in the Mpumalanga province are illiterate. One report said SAPS recruits get “minimal training”.

Ted Leggett of the Institute for Security Studies said new recruits were being pressed into service after ninety days training. The core of the problem was that there were 2,5 million recorded crimes in South Africa in 2001/2. This translated into 115 crimes for each detective to investigate each year, one new case every two days.(31) “This results in crisis management”, declared Leggett. Five policemen were held after robbing a cell phone shop in Hillbrow.(32) A police spokesman said the five would be facing charges of armed robbery, corruption and theft.

Police corruption is on the rise, says the Internal Complaints Directorate (ICD).(33) Director Karen McKenzie declares “the numbers are increasing. We have a 100% increase in corruption cases compared to the past two financial years.” Low pay was one of the reasons, observers said.
They could have a point. The government has its priorities wrong, said one young policeman to us. “They allow useless corrupt and inefficient mayors to receive R700 000 a year, with perks, while we – who put our lives on the line – only get around R44 000 per annum”. In September 2003, 73 students at the Pretoria Police Training College had not received any pay for three months.(34) Adding to the anger of these rookies, staff allegedly threatened to halt their graduation if they talked to the press.

In the meantime, it was announced that Commissioner of Police Jackie Selebi has a luxury aircraft set aside for his use that costs R5 000 an hour to operate.

During our research throughout South Africa, the role of the SAPS in crime prevention and the apprehension of criminals has been of a very low standard, according to farmers. A very high percentage of farmers say the police can do nothing, or they are overwhelmed, or they simply open a docket and “that’s the last we hear of them.” Of course there are many efficient and dedicated people in the SAPS, and this fact must never be over-looked, but on the whole, standards have dropped considerably (where in the world are nearly 40 000 of a police force illiterate?) Replacing the commandos with unskilled and poorly-trained policemen will not suffice.

On July 24 2002 it was announced that South African National Defence Force (SANDF) troops would be withdrawing from border defence posts. The SANDF stated that border protection is the duty of the South African Police Service and there are not sufficient funds to provide back-up.(36) At the same time, it became known at an Institute for Security Studies seminar in Pretoria that the South African border with Namibia and Botswana was totally unprotected and that only 952 troops were stationed on the country’s borders with Zimbabwe, Mozambique and Lesotho.

Figures presented before Parliament in October 2002 showed the SANDF had 206 generals in the army, with 60 000 ordinary members, a ratio of 1:291. The German army has one general for every 1684 soldiers, and America’s ratio is 1:2 428, making the SANDF one of the world’s most top-heavy armies. One year later, in November 2003, this situation had not been rectified. In fact, nineteen new generals were appointed.

These are highly-paid persons, and their salaries are more questionable given that the SANDF too is strapped for cash to defend the country’s borders.

This in light of a March 2003 warning that few young whites were joining the SANDF. Lt. General Gilbert Ramano told a National Assembly defence committee that 92% of the 47 000 strong army is black, 6% coloured and only 2% white.(44) Further, General Ramano said many soldiers “steal state property and misuse state vehicles. Many belong to gangs and syndicates or are corrupt and keep busy with illegal activities.” Deadly weapons have been stolen from the SANDF, 73 to be exact. These include R4 and R5 assault rifles which are frequently used in transit robberies. These rifles cannot be bought over the counter, said the Freedom Front’s Pieter Groenewald.(45)

However, in some areas the Defence Force is excelling. In cooperation with local farmers, personnel from the SANDF have successfully weakened stock and drug smuggling across the border between Kwazulu/Natal and Lesotho.(46) The SANDF can make a difference, given the quality of some of its personnel. How the rank and file will contend with commando duties remains to be seen.
 
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Chapter XV, part 5:

The American Central Intelligence Agency’s website says Namibia, a former German colony north west of the Republic of South Africa, is a land of “very limited natural fresh water reserves, where desertification, land degradation and wild life poaching exist. It is mostly desert, hot and dry with sparse and erratic rainfall.

Given the facts above, one could believe there is no agriculture to speak of. However, despite its aridity, the country’s 3 500 mainly beef-producing commercial farmers provide 50% of the food requirements for nearly 2 million Namibians (the balance of the country’s food requirements is imported from South Africa).

Who owns what land in Namibia is a subject for the historians. Suffice it to say that the only truly indigenous peoples are the Bushmen tribes. In South Africa, they were the Khoi and the San in the south, and the Bushmen in the north western parts. What the Namibian government should be focusing on is how to feed its people. (In fact, all African governments should be doing this but, as we see every day, this is not so). One would think that a former office sweeper like President Sam Nujoma(1) who came to power after a prolonged revolutionary bush war (and with the help of the West) would look to the future. He is adjudged one of the world’s least-educated heads of state – he was taught by (white) missionaries and only has a grade school education.

Namibia became independent in 1990 with a constitution that limits the president to two-five-year terms, but in 1999 Nujoma managed to have this altered to allow himself a third term – he insisted that it would be his final one.(3) His utterances over the past eighteen months have alerted his countrymen and the world to one implacable fact: his rhetoric is modeled on that of Zimbabwe’s Robert Mugabe, a tyrant of the first order whose official policies include murder, rape, torture and the indiscriminate expropriation of his country’s productive farmland. Mugabe, as the world knows, has irreparably destroyed what used to be a breadbasket of Africa. His sins are legend. Suffice it to say that commercial farmers in Namibia are stunned at Nujoma’s utterances in a land where the margin between the success or failure of food production is one of the slimmest in the world.

But who said logic is a norm in some parts of Africa? Nujoma is not only calling for white land expropriation, he is building himself a palace outside Windhoek, the country’s capital, for R186 million, in a country where a third of his citizens earn less than R7 a day. He awarded the job to a North Korean firm without a tender, the same firm that built a giant monument of him holding an AK47 in Windhoek.

In August 2002 he warned the country’s white farmers that they had better comply with the country’s land reform program or else. During his party’s congress at the time, he told his followers he planned to take over 192 farms owned by foreigners. Then came his “landless majority” clarion cry (he’s trying for a third presidential term?), followed by threats of expropriation if the “arrogant white farmers” did not adhere to the government’s willing seller, willing buyer policy. It certainly sounds familiar!

Expropriation cannot be too far away. The law in Namibia already says the government can expropriate “under-utilized farms” with due compensation. In a country where the cattle-carrying capacity is probably the lowest in the world, how does one define “under-utilization”? The South West African Peoples Organisation (SWAPO) of which Mr. Nujoma has been president since its founding in 1960, declared at its 2002 congress that the party “was concerned at the slow pace of land distribution which has the potential to cause civil strife”.(4) The message was loud and clear to the farmers. Fears of a Zimbabwe-type grab were palpable, and with reason. Nujoma had loudly supported Mugabe at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg shortly before, with talk of “British colonialists” owning 80% of Zimbabwe’s land. (This of course is not true!)

Some Namibian farmers there and then decided to sell their farms. “I was sick and tired of being told I was arrogant and punished for being white. Why should I invest my money and time in a country where I no longer feel welcome?” said one farmer.(5) “The whites are being driven out. In 20 or 30 years’ time I don’t imagine there’ll be any whites left in Southern Africa”.

As in South Africa and Zimbabwe, overseas press reports always refer to whites owning the “best” land, but no reference is made as to how it became the “best” through hard work and skill.

Clearly, the policies of Mugabe and Nujoma are the policies of resentment. Their people sat in Africa for millennia and achieved little except subsistence farming and fratricide. Along came the whites and created productive agricultural systems and first world structures. These two men have monumental inferiority complexes and lash out at those who show them up. The tragedy is that they are in power and can act upon their venomous designs.

The political reality is that the bulk of Swapo’s support base is made up of Oshiwambo-speaking groups from Northern Namibia who never lost any land to the colonial process.(8) Some of the farms owned by “foreigners” are in the high-income tourism business. Some of these foreigners are South African while other properties belong to German passport-holders who have lived in the country for some time. However, nearly every Namibian cabinet minister has availed himself of cheap Agriculture Bank loans to buy farms for themselves – Nujoma himself owns several in the Otavi district – so the land reform program, as in Zimbabwe, is presently benefiting the privileged elite.

Government rhetoric was followed by land invasions, as happened in Zimbabwe. The threats against the arrogant whites were translated as a go-ahead by the masses to grab farms.

Democratic Turnhalle Alliance’s member of Parliament McHenry Venaani said the government’s resettlement program was simply “following in the path of Kenya and Zimbabwe by apportioning land to government leaders”.(13) “You are giving land to the wrong people” he said. He also declared that farms acquired by government for resettlement “were deteriorating rapidly and that productivity on these farms was not what it could be. Those who do not work the land must be evicted from the farms and replaced with others who want to be resettled and want to farm”.

The government told the House of Parliament in early October 2003 that “little was known about how effective the resettlement policy actually might be”.(14) If such land degradation continues, Namibia will descend much faster into desert than other countries in southern Africa. But who seems to care in the ruling elite? On 14 November 2003 Mr. Risto Kapenda of the National Union of Namibian Workers said “whites must go”.(15) “You Europeans must go back to Europe, nobody will miss you. Before you stole our land, we were self-supporting farmers. If we get back the ground which belonged to our forefathers, we will be able to sustain ourselves. We don’t need you!”

If he’s wrong, which he is, the consequences of this racist invocation to national suicide will be, as the saying goes, too ghastly to contemplate. “Land reform” in its various guises has meant nothing but tragedy in southern Africa. Namibia’s president is determined to tread the path of Zimbabwe.
 
#58
#58
Chapter XVI, part 1:

Chapter XVI SLAUGHTER – THE FARM MURDER PLAGUE

South African property is now subject to expropriation by the government. Some “sweetener” clauses were added to this legislation at the last minute, but the bottom line remains – nobody, least of all a South African farmer, possesses secure property rights.

What has become impossible to bear is the emergence of farm murders and attacks as a terrible fact of daily life in the ANC’s new South Africa.

Since the new South African government came to power in 1994, 1 600 farmers (in excess of 2 000 by 2006) have been murdered, and there have been well in excess of 8 000 farm attacks. Some victims have been horribly tortured, and in many instances, nothing was stolen during the perpetration of the crime. (Since the SA government’s ascendance to power in May 1994, a farm murder has occurred on average once every second day, while there have been on average 77 farm attacks per month).

The pervasiveness of these murders and the Mau Mau-type behaviour of the criminals who commit them has alerted the world to what is happening to commercial agriculture in South Africa, especially in light of the catastrophe which has befallen Zimbabwe. Critical eyes have now been fixed on the South African government’s reaction to these murders, and what the regime proposes to do about them.

Not much, it seems. South Africa has become the crime capital of the world. In itself, this is a devastating indictment of the ability of the new SA government to govern. But what is alarming about the farm murder plague is the systematic destruction directed at the very few people who keep over 100 million people in Southern Africa fed. The public outcry about farm murders precipitated the appointment of a commission of enquiry by the government into farm murders, but the commission’s report has been disappointing and frustrating. It has been met with scathing censure in some quarters. Like so many official enquiries in South Africa, this one appears to be something of a whitewash.

Whatever caused the delay, the interpretation of certain facts was disputed. In nearly 90% of the murders, says the report, the motive was robbery. Intimidation was given as the reason for 7,1% of the attacks, while only 2% were attributed to racial motives.

What do we say about farm murders? What have we found throughout South Africa?. It is a fact that most murders are carried out by young black men between the ages of 18 and 30. There is no law and order in the country, an extremely low murder conviction rate (9% as against Japan’s 99%), no jobs for people whom the State President himself describes as “unemployable”, and the belief in many black communities that having a piece of land, even as a subsistence possession, is better than living in a squatter camp.

The murder rate among South African commercial farmers (who are not all white) is the highest for a specific group in the world – 313 per 100 000.

In his keynote book “Farm Attacks and the African Renaissance”, Professor C.J. Moolman outlines the role of land in traditional Africa. He succinctly defines the basic polarity between Western and African cultures. “The livelihood of Blacks has traditionally been, and is currently still in rural areas, intricately connected to their system of land tenure. They erect their dwellings on the land, cultivate it, graze their livestock upon it, and hunt over its surface.”

“They use its water for domestic purposes and for their herds and flocks. They eat the wild fruits and other fruits it produces, and make medicines from its vegetation. They convert its wood into huts, palisades and various utensils, and its reeds and grass into basket-work, thatch and string, and they extract from it metals, clay for their pots, and earth for the floors and walls for their huts.” This describes traditional Africa. But traditional Africa cannot feed itself. There is not one single African country self-sufficient in food. They have to depend on the West for survival. And the West has a completely different approach to food production, and to life itself.
This cultural dichotomy unfortunately occurs in one country – South Africa – and the contents of this book shows clearly that Western commercial farming has rescued South Africa from the fate which befell the rest of the continent.

“Rural land hunger”, says Professor Moolman “cannot be satisfied when its needs for land are based on anything other than agricultural production. Ideologically motivated “liberation of the land” is not an accepted motive for either redistribution of land or the intimidation of white farmers in an effort to force them off their land”. Thus the government’s promise to return the land to the people as outlined in the Freedom Charter is an invitation to famine. By turning a blind eye to land invasions (except of course when the government itself owns the land or where diamond mining is involved), and by withdrawing the commandos from rural areas, the government has exposed the South African commercial farming sector to the current wave of criminality, where hatred, resentment and cruel savagery accompany so many farm murders.
South Africa cannot survive this genocidal wave, and it must be checked. Given the disastrous results of Minister Didiza’s handover of productive farms to unskilled people, many wonder why she insists that 30% of productive farmland will be transferred to emerging farmers before 2015.

There is talk that Ms. Didiza knows her policy is a failure, and is prepared to sacrifice 30% of South Africa’s productive farms “in the interests of her party’s idealism and promises”.
It is claimed she believes that the remaining 70% of the farming community will continue operating “and carry us all”. She may be in for a big surprise. A large number of farmers have had enough. Some would sell tomorrow at a fair price, others for what they can get. When four members of your family have been murdered on your farm, it is not really an attractive proposition any more. When you see what has happened to Zimbabwe’s commercial farming community, the future looks bleak, despite government assurances that “it won’t happen here”.

When your grazing is burnt out four times a year, when your crops and stock are stolen, when you can do little to stop squatter invasions on what is after all your private property, and when your chances of being slaughtered in your home are the greatest in the world, why bother?
 
#59
#59
Chapter XVI, part 2:

Then of course there’s the expropriation legislation. Why put your heart and soul into something that can be taken away at the stroke of a pen? Why, indeed! Many farmers soldier on because farming is their life. But their children? Are they attracted to a life of danger, or does a career overseas or in the cities look more alluring? Ms. Didiza should not depend on her 70% back-up. There are no guarantees here.

The next question about farm murders is why? The government report declared that most murders and attacks are simply criminal. But Professor Moolman points out the following:
• Why are the attacks and murders on farms so premeditated, while statistics indicate that the overwhelming majority of murders in South Africa are related to alcohol, drug abuse, and interpersonal and domestic conflict?
• Why are farm attacks so extremely brutal which is not the case with the majority of murders in South Africa?
• Why are farm attacks and murders mostly black on white, while this is not necessarily the case in the rest of South Africa? If theft is the most important motive, why are thousands of black shop owners in rural areas not brutalised remotely as much during attacks by gangs as is the white farming community?
• Why are farmers constantly accused of mistreating their workers, thus precipitating farm attacks, while the Helen Suzman Foundation found that 93% of farm workers indicate their relationship with their employers is good?
• Why have bad socio-economic conditions become the reason for attacks, while it is acknowledged that bad socio-economic conditions existed before 1994 in black communities?

Professor Moolman says cases of “senseless killing” have been identified. Criminals wait at the farm house, without taking anything, and then torture and kill the farmer on his return. Other cases reveal a farmer’s family being held hostage until he returns. Some criminals travel vast distances to attack people on farms and then only take firearms or the family car, which is later found abandoned down he road. Racial utterances at the crime scene are commonplace.

Gratuitous violence is widespread. If women are present, they are often raped. Torture is now fairly routine, something relatively new in South Africa’s criminal history. Cruelty to animals is recurrent, a hark back to the Mau Mau terror campaign which drove whites off Kenyan farms.

Suffice it to say evidence has been placed before the South African public by way of television and the printed media of the sheer savagery of those who inflict pain on innocent people: an elderly farmer whose head was opened by an axe; a lady of 84 who was repeatedly raped. Vicious stabbings are common, as is using a heated iron to burn victims. Some victims have been suffocated, others slashed with a panga (a heavy knife used to cut sugar cane). People have been set alight (including a year-old baby), while others were strangled, garroted, pistol-whipped, mutilated, and dumped into boiling water. Children have been threatened and beaten up, and some youngsters were tied to trees and left to die.

Clearly, robbery is not the main motive for farm attacks, and our research shows that farmers feel this to be so. “They want to drive us from our land” we heard continuously. The additional problems of intimidation, crop and stock theft, illegal squatting and expropriation legislation all point to this being a fact.

Minister Didiza should remember that attacks on farmers will considerably reduce her remaining 70% of commercial farmers who are expected to feed us all. The way things are going at present, she will be lucky to have any farms left to expropriate!
 
#60
#60

Longer version.

cliff note version of the cliff note version please

This book is dedicated to every commercial farmer in South Africa, without whose skill, determination and resilience none of us would survive.

A special thanks to loyal supporters who kept my spirit high – especially Andre du Plessis (Eastern Cape) and Johan Bezuidenhout (Limpopo)

TWO NEWS ARTICLES . . .

THIS DAY, January 8, 2004

Stephen Hofstatter and Michael Schmidt

“Farmland Report Jolts Rand”

JOHANNESBURG – The land issue took political center stage in South Africa yesterday as the rand weakened in reaction to reports of massive land claims as government officials scrambled to ally fears of possible farm invasions by the landless. The rand lost 39c against the dollar in intraday trading, retreating to R6,62 from R6,23 on Tuesday before recovering slightly to R6,59.

“It’s starting to have an impact on the market. You can see that the issue is becoming an increasing focus ahead of the April elections”, Callum Henderson, the Bank of America’s emerging markets analyst, told Reuters yesterday. Later this month President Thabo Mbeki is expected to sign an amendment to the restitution act into law that will allow land to be expropriated from farmers opposing claims government deems valid.

Reuters, 07 January, 2004

“Dispossessed want 20% of SA Farmland”

By Alistair Thomson

Families and communities evicted by the apartheid state are claiming 40 to 50 percent of commercial farmland in some provinces and around 20 percent nationally, the land claims chief said on Wednesday. Currency traders have cited foreign media reports that land restitution would be accelerated ahead of elections this year as a concern for foreign investors given the land grab in next-door Zimbabwe, which South Africa has vowed not to repeat. A new law that has focused attention on land issues will allow the government to expropriate land for restitution where negotiations on a “willing buyer, willing seller” basis fail.

The New York Times reported that in KwaZulu/Natal up to 70 percent of farmland was subject to land claims – a figure Chief Land Claims Commissioner Tozi Gwanya said was exaggerated. “The real figure is around 40 to 50 percent”, Gwanya told Reuters. He said 155 000 hectares of KwaZulu/Natal were due to be handed back to nine separate communities in February or March 2004 in one of the biggest transfers to date.
 
#61
#61
I am from South Africa - lived in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg.

My uncle was a farmer there - thanks for posting this.
 
#62
#62
You'll have to settle for getting them poetically.

Here come old flattop he come grooving up slowly
He got joo-joo eyeball he one holy roller
He got hair down to his knee
Got to be a joker he just do what he please

------------------------------------------------

Herman Charles Bosman
Mafeking Road and Other Stories 1947
Reflections on Great Literature: Herman Charles Bosman

"Leopards?-- Oom Schalk Lourens said-- Oh yes, there are two varieties on this side of the Limpopo. The chief difference between them is that the one kind of leopard has got a few more spots on it than the other kind. But when you meet a leopard in the veld, unexpectedly, you seldom trouble to count his spots to find out what kind he belongs to. That is unnecessary. Because, whatever kind of leopard it is that you come across in this way, you only do one kind of running. And that is the fastest kind."

-"In the Withaak's Shade"
--------------------
Jonny Steinbeck The Midlands;

In the spring of 1999, in the beautiful hills of the KwaZulu-Natal midlands, a young white farmer is shot dead on the dirt road running from his father’s farmhouse to his irrigation fields. The murder is the work of assassins rather than robbers; a single shot behind the ear, nothing but his gun stolen, no forensic evidence like spent cartridges or fingerprints left at the scene. Journalist Jonny Steinberg travels to the midlands to investigate.

Right from the beginning, it is clear that the young white man is not the only one who will die on that frontier, and that the story of his and other deaths will illuminate a great deal about the early days of post-apartheid communist South Africa.
-----------------------------------------

Residence in South Africa by Thomas Pringle

Jonny Steinberg’s book ‘Midlands’“There is a lovely
road that runs from Ixopo into the hills. These hills
are grass-covered and rolling, and they are lovely
beyond any singing of it. The road climbs seven miles
into them, to Carisbrooke, and from there, if there
is no mist, you look down on one of the fairest valleys
of Africa”.

Cry, the Beloved Country - Alan Paton

The famous American talk show host Oprah Winfrey has
“discovered” South Africa. She told her audience
recently what a beautiful country it was, one of her
favourites. She then donated Cry, The Beloved Country
to everyone in her audience. Clearly, she was
intoxicated with Paton’s expressive prose, and his
eloquent descriptions of the land of the Zulus. It is
indicative of the drastic changes that have taken place
in our country that Paton’s widow has left South Africa
– she was mugged and departed in disgust at what she
called a rampant crime wave. Moreover, Paton’s beloved
Natal is reverting to a savage battleground of souls
and bodies which Steinberg has evocatively portrayed
in his book.

Of all the provinces in South Africa, KwaZulu/Natal
is the most shocking in the ferocity of its antagonisms.
The evil which now permeates the rural areas is
pernicious and seemingly inexorable. Land invasions,
intimidation, murder, theft, arson, rape and assaults
– these are the hallmarks of a province which seems
to be out of control. Ms. Pat Dunn, descendant of
nineteenth century British settler John Dunn (who
married several Zulu wives) is a victim of just about
every “gross violation of human rights” which Amnesty
International defines. She told our researcher she had
written to Chief Gatsha Buthelezi to complain about the
behaviour of his people, where youngsters are adrift in
a sea of disrespect for life and property, and where
tribal warlords kill and intimidate at will, with
little chance of conviction and incarceration.

His reply on 26 November 1998 expresses “distress”
at the situation but he simply advises Ms. Dunn to
take the matter to court. “As a descendant of King
Cetshwayo who gave the land to John Dunn, I find it
unacceptable that the descendants of Dunn should be
robbed of their rightful inheritance”. Since 1998,
of course, things only worsened.

The new South Africa has not been kind to the Dunns.
Pat left South Africa in 1971 to escape apartheid.
She settled again in this country in the mid nineties,
and she is shocked at what she finds. She and her
family have battled for over 100 years for their
land, land which was given to her forefathers by the
Zulu chief Cetshwayo. After 83 years, the Dunn family
eventually received title to the land which was theirs
by right of inheritance. This land area, situated in
a narrow coastal strip between the N2 highway and the
sea, immediately to the north of the Tugela River, has
historically been owned and farmed by the descendants
of John Dunn and his Zulu wives. It adjoins, to its
north, a “reserve” area known as Macambini Tribal
Authority, headed by a chief Inkosi Mathaba. By the
early 1990s, Mathaba, an IFP strongman, was widely
feared, and linked in numerous reports to widespread
violence in the area which left many dead or injured.
This resulted in hundreds of people fleeing their
ancestral homes. Mathaba was subsequently found by
the Truth and Reconciliation Commission to have been
among prominent provincial leaders responsible for
deploying hit squads, leading to “gross violations
of human rights, including killing, attempted killing,
arson….”

The legal property owners and their families, among
them the Dunns, were subjected to murder, rape,
robbery, threats, intimidation and arson. Sugar cane
crops were regularly burnt, especially in the dry
season. Ms. Dunn told us she had been burnt out five
years in a row, and that her harvest had been well
below normal. The local Community Hall, built by the
farmers without government help, was destroyed by fire.
Dunn appealed for police help, but nothing was done.

She has been threatened telephonically – “once they
brought a coffin to a meeting which Chief Mathaba
addressed and which I attended. On the side of the
coffin was written ‘Pat Dunn’. The coffin was marched
to the cemetery and burnt.” She continued: “We have
had numerous robberies and break-ins. They came one
day looking for work. They took our revolvers and took
what they wanted.” “They took my car – it was found
burnt out on the highway. The second time, they killed
one dog and poisoned the other one. Four armed men shot
my husband and they beat me so badly they broke three
vertebrae. I think they were sent by Mathaba. It’s back
to the jungle here. I have lost all respect for the Zulus”.

The police were called in, but nothing materialized..
(This phrase was repeated to our researchers right
throughout South Africa). “The police go through the
motions”, says Ms. Dunn.

This type of behaviour has become a hallmark of the
present government. Promises to “look into the matter”,
to “come back to” the complainants, to appoint a
“commission of enquiry”, to “address the problem” are
made, but nothing happens. In most cases, the situations
actually worsen.

In the Verulam area near Durban, Indian market gardeners
have been targeted by violence, the most recent example
being the cold-blooded murder of a married couple in the
presence of one of their children.

There is simply no law and order. The government is not
upholding the laws of the land, and the police are not
protecting those who should expect protection. It will
be necessary to force the state to protect constitutionally
-enshrined human rights. But who’s going to pay to force
the government to do its job?

------------------------------------------------------------
“A Century of South African Short Stories”
Olive Schreiner, 1906

This Schreiner story recalls the hardships
endured by the women left behind after their
male relatives had succumbed during the Anglo
-Boer war in South Africa, 1899 – 1903.

------------------------------------------

It should be noted that the first Dutch Boers ('boer' meaning 'farmer) began to settle near Cape Town about the time the Pilgrims were settling in America, ie about 1652. Only later did they encounter and have difficulties with any native population, the first being the Xhosa who, as a hunter gatherer tribe were migrating in a southwesterly direction. (Nelson Mandela is of the Xhosa tribe.) This conflict began around 1780 and lasted approximately 100 years with the Great Fish River being the border between Boer (first Dutch then later Flemish, German and French) farmers (and English settlers after 1820) and was the source of the "apartheid" policy. IE; each would live 'apart' on their own side of the river.

There were many native tribes, none of which were displaced by the original Boers. The other major tribe was the Zulu who began to migrate into the area about a hundred years after the original Boer settlers and were thought to have originated from the Congo valley far to the north, they were very inclined to be a warrior nation and the equal militarily of any tribe in Africa.

In 1880 and 1881 the Boers successfully defended their territory vs the British however the British returned in greater numbers and won the second Boer was from 1899 to 1902.

That's my short version of 350 years of South African history.

"For whenever a white man seeks to live among
them as their equals they will either destroy
him or devour him. And they will destroy all
of his work." "Never fraternize with them as
equals. Never accept them as your social equals
or they will devour you. They will destroy you."
Albert Schweitzer
Recipient of the 1952 Nobel Peace Prize.

"About this mixing of the Kaffirs with the Indians
I must confess I feel most strongly. I think it is
very unfair to the Indian population..."
Mahatma Gandhi
 
#63
#63
This is the best I could muster:

"His children are not interested in carrying on farming. In fact, they have left the country."

marxist leninist takeover of africa
Out of Africa

The Marxist pretenders wanted complete power, immediately.
The whites opposed this irresponsible demand. It should be
said that once the communists started financing wars, the
whites began a process of inclusion, and of finding the
most suitable black people to hand over to. This happened
in both Zimbabwe and South Africa. In both cases, there
were suitable anti-Communists whom we wanted to hand power
over to. These were people we believed could rule the country
successfully. Bishop Muzorewa won a free and fair election
and became the first black ruler of Zimbabwe/Rhodesia (as it
was called for a time). But the Marxists did not like this
and continued a war against him until they won. Similarly,
in South Africa, Chief Buthelezi of the Zulus seemed to be
the most promising pro-Western man. But the ANC was quick
to attack him and fight bitterly against him so that he
could never gain the support of the majority of blacks.

It is worth noting the attitude of the blacks themselves,
the masses in whose name all this was being done. The race
relations between blacks and whites in the colonial days
were far better than now. It is true there was racism and
true that there was a certain amount of unhappiness, but
it was nothing like the problems of today.

There is a popular mythology which has been spread
around the world by communist propagandists which creates
the impression that black people were so frustrated that
they were ready to ?storm the Bastille? in order to remove
themselves from the yoke of colonialism. This is not true,
especially among the older blacks. The communists got most
of their support from the impressionable youth. But, the
darkest secret of all is that in order to win the blacks
to their side, the Marxist Liberators had to use extreme
forms of violence. Terror was the tactic. The terror was
gruesome and hideous.

We whites were outraged by the use of Marxist terror,
and we saw these Marxist pretenders as being nothing more
than terrorists who would stoop to any level -- to murder,
torture or lying in order to come to power. Often, people
in the rest of the world were amazed at why, a mere 250,000
whites in Rhodesia held out so bitterly against the likes
of Mugabe and Nkomo. But that was because we believed them
to be the embodiment of evil. If they were the voice of the
people, then why did the people not flock to them? If they
were the saviors of the black masses, then why did they have
to beat and murder black people and terrorize them into
subjugation in order to win their support?

If the black people were so keen to get rid of white
rule then why did six million blacks not swamp 250,000
whites and murder us all? They outnumbered us twenty to
one. They could have killed us with spears and pangas if
they hated us so much. But they didn't.

Why?

The truth is, many blacks were not too keen on the
Liberators. So the Liberators had to conduct an 'ethnic
cleansing,' or to be more accurate, a purging of the
blacks. Anyone who opposed their Marxist-Leninist
nonsense had to dealt with. Any black man who was
friendly to whites or a supporter of the whites had to
be murdered or intimidated. Black policemen and black
soldiers and their families were attacked. What is hardly
ever mentioned is that in both Rhodesia and South Africa,
one found thousands of black men who were either Policemen
or who fought in our armies. Right to the end, there were
blacks fighting to keep the whites in power. There were
blacks who were not impressed with the Marxist pretenders
or their methods.

Some of the finest troops in the Rhodesian and South
African armies were blacks who were opposed to communism.
The deadly Selous Scouts for example, were composed mostly
of blacks in a counter terrorist role. In South Africa,
32 battalion consisted of blacks and Portuguese who were
opposed to Marxists.

(..........read on...........)
Out of Africa

excerpts:

It is worth giving an example of their approach. In
Zimbabwe, the war was fought in the rural areas, often
far away from civilization. A gang of guerrillas would
approach a village and gather together all the people
who maybe numbered several hundred. They would try to
convince the villagers to support them. They would even
teach them politically orientated songs. They would
indoctrinate them with Marxist ideology. But then they
would warn them of what would happen to a "sellout."
They would then pick a man from the audience, to
demonstrate to the villagers what they would do to
someone who cooperated with the whites. They might
pick a man and then start beating him while forcing
the villagers to watch. On some occasions they would
begin cutting off flesh from his living body. A favorite
target was to cut a man?s ears off, or cut his lips off.
They might cut his lips off with a knife or a bayonet or
even rip them off with pliers. Then they would call his
wife and ask her to cook her husband?s flesh. Then they
would make her eat it.

All this would be done in full view of the horrified
villagers. For all to see, by way of an object lesson,
they would beat an innocent man, torture him and finally
bayonet him to death. This, they would declare, is what
will happen to anyone who cooperates with the whites.

In South Africa a similar tactic was practiced in order
to terrify all the blacks into submission. Winnie Mandela's
infamous statement about freeing South Africa with boxes
of matches is all about killing blacks who opposed the ANC
and who worked with the whites. The ANC wanted a method of
killing people, which would terrorize all black opposition
into submission. So they invented the infamous 'necklace.'
They dreamed up the idea of putting a tire around a person's
neck (i.e., a necklace) and filling it with petrol, which
would be set alight. The person would thus burn to death.
But, it was not as simple as that. The person would often
be beaten, stoned, set alight and maybe, in the end stabbed
to ensure that they were dead. This is the dreadful terror
which Winnie Mandela and the rest of the ANC are so proud
of. For all the errors of the whites, such methods of terror
were not used by whites against blacks in any of the colonies.

One should therefore call into question the right of
communists to claim that they are the voice of black
Africans. In my opinion they are not. They no longer
cut people?s body parts off, nor do they set them alight,
but they still use force when it?s needed. They are not
averse to murdering blacks who oppose them. The ANC has
not ruled South Africa long enough for us to see them
using state force to cower the black masses, but that
day may yet come. In Zimbabwe, in 2000, Mugabe sent thugs
into villages to beat up those who supported his democratic
opposition. Others were sent to ?re-education camps? (a
nice old Soviet-era phrase!) In the 1980?s the Matabele
tribe in southern Zimbabwe expressed its dissatisfaction
with Mugabe. He responded by engaging in genocide. He
sent the North Korean-trained 5th Brigade in to beat,
torture and murder black people. He killed approximately
2,000 people. Entire villages were wiped out and people
were thrown down wells. Not a peep was heard out of the
rest of the world.

Imagine if the whites had done such a thing? The world
would have declared war on us and bombed us into submission.
But, a black communist can do it and hardly anyone takes
notice. Such are the double standards the world applies to
us in Africa. The white man is measured by one yardstick
and the black Marxist by another.

Whites never committed such heinous crimes, but the black
communists could cut people up, kick babies around like
footballs until they die, hamstring men before killing
them or rape and kill women -- and nobody says a thing.
This is the big, deep, dark secret of the rulers of
southern Africa today. The same people who wear suits
and drink champagne, and are lauded across the world,
are the same men who once ordered their followers to put
Portuguese people on sawmills or who planted landmines to
blow up white and black civilians alike. Life to them was
cheap then and it remains so now.

They kill black people even more readily than they kill
whites. But they preach human rights and refuse to hang
murderers. They cannot tell right from wrong, nor are
they interested in it. They rose to power by terrorizing
innocent people. Now that they are in power they protect
drug dealers and criminals.

We whites may have committed crimes, we may have done many
wrongs (including keeping black people down) but our crimes
are far less than theirs. We have also, in the final analysis
learned from our mistakes and most of us regret that we did
not change our ways more willingly or earlier. But the
communists who are in power see no wrong in anything they
did. They are bereft of conscience. This is part of the
training they got from the Russians and others. Everything
they do in the pursuit of power is correct. They never do
wrong. These moral degenerates now run countries like
multimillionaires and smile in front of cameras. But their
hands are covered in the blood of the black people they
murdered to get there.
 
#64
#64
I am from South Africa - lived in Cape Town, Port Elizabeth and Johannesburg.

My uncle was a farmer there - thanks for posting this.

You're welcome, I noticed you handle earlier and wondered if there was an African connection.

Some families from South Africa settled near here about fifteen years ago and although I havn't met them, I have heard some of their stories second hand. There is another couple who live nearby who spend about thirty years in west Africa and I hear have quite a bit of memorabilia they collected there in their home here, hope to meet them someday and see those things.

I also have a friend who recently passed away who was an engineer and he and his family spent over ten years in Swaziland creating pipelines to supply people with clean water.

Can you tell me anything about Ghana??? One of my children is slated to make a missionary trip there next summer and the Mrs would like me to find out anything I can about conditions there. (I'm just happy it's not Turkey, since that's where the last trip was.)

Let's see if this map of the county by county results of the 2008 US presidential election returns works.

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Here is something else of interest on the African situation;

Out of America: A black man confronts Africa by Keith B. Richburg
Out of America: A Black Man Confronts Africa. - book reviews | Washington Monthly | Find Articles at BNET


Better to have been brought across the ocean
in leg irons, he said, than to be stuck now
in modern Africa.

To say that slavery was preferable to the
rigors of life in modern Africa seemed a bit
overwrought for someone who had barely unpacked
his bags. In any event, now, after finishing a
three-year tour on the continent, Richburg has
written a book in which he elaborates at length
on his revulsion with all things African. To
hear him tell it, the continent's problems are
so "intractable" that the outside world best
leave it alone until "Africa is ready to save
itself." In one passage, he writes: "I do not
hate Africa or the Africans. What I hate is
the senseless brutality, the waste of human
life."

But a few paragraphs later, he oscillates,
admitting: "I am terrified of Africa. I don't
want to be from this place." And perhaps the
greatest sin, he insists, is to romanticize
"Mother Africa" as "some kind of black Valhalla,
where the descendants of slaves would be
welcomed back and where black men and women
can walk in true dignity" He's tired, he writes,
"of all the ignorance and hypocrisy and the
double standards heard and read about Africa,
much of it from people who've never been there.

Talk to me about Africa and my black roots
and my kinship with my African brothers and
I'll throw it back in your face."

The resulting memoir, Out of America, takes
the reader on an angry tour through some of
the world's most wretched places. Each chapter
fleshes out his ordeal with anecdotes,
autobiographical reminiscences and broad
cultural reflections. In refugee camps in
Zaire, he sees bodies stacked up like
firewood, and in Somalia he witnesses
thousands of people literally dying on
the streets from starvation. In Rwanda,
perhaps the worst place of all, he writes:
"I watched the dead float down a river in
Tanzania," and "there I was, drenched with
sweat under the blistering sun, standing at
the Rusmo Falls bridge, watching the bodies
float past me. They were bloated now, horribly
discolored. Sometimes the hands and feet were
bound together. Some were clearly missing some
limbs."

------------------------------------

To my own way of thinking the biggest travesty is not so much the biased and slanted way of reporting we find in the major media outlets that only demonize white people and place all blame for all the African people's problems on the white man but that in universities across this nation there are courses taught in 'black history' that are nothing more that communist/socialist propaganda that have little if any connection to reality and to true history. One would think that institutions of higher learning could do one heck of a lot better in education our young people.gs
 
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#65
#65
After all the violence and the double talk
There's just a song in all the trouble and the strife
You do the walk, you do the walk of life
Yeah you do the walk of life
 
#66
#66
Chapter XVII, part 1;

Chapter XVII CONCLUSION

“The fairy-tale ending of the independence war in Zimbabwe ten years ago, with its emphasis on reconciliation between black and white … has been rudely shattered. The cause is the state’s pronouncements on land ownership since the recent termination of the Lancaster House Constitution.

Black workers on white-owned farms are worried that farm take-overs will threaten their livelihoods. Among white farmers, there is a growing feeling the government has finally decided to run roughshod over their interests. In terms of the latest amendments to the country’s constitution, the state can legally take over any property at a compensation to be determined by itself and at a price that cannot be challenged by arbitration or in court.

Large-scale commercial farmers, almost all of them white, own nearly 29% of Zimbabwe’s utilized land. But they produce marketed products worth nearly two billion dollars a year and support more than 1,5 million black workers and their families on their farms.

Farmers foresee their highly-productive additional farms being reduced to small plots of 4 –5 hectares each for settlement by subsistence tribesmen, inevitably with resultant erosion, degradation and a massive loss of potential output.

The minister warned the white farmers not to use the issue of farm workers as an excuse to maintain the status quo. “Government must redress the imbalances of the past in the interests of both political and economic stability”, said Dr. Mangwende.”

At the time, the greatest problem for Zimbabwe’s commercial farmers was the potential loss of production to the country and the plight of their black workers. Never in their wildest dreams could they have imagined what was in store for the country known as “the breadbasket of Africa” – the terror, the murders, rapes and tortures, the famine, the destruction of the judiciary, the arbitrary closures of the media and the huge and obscene profligacy of the ruling clique while their citizens starved.

Could it happen here in South Africa? You bet it could, unless South Africa’s citizens stand up and do something now, not later. The Zimbabwe government’s assurances and the guarantees are eerily repeated in today’s South Africa, and it is not “pessimistic” at all to wonder whether we could end up a second Zimbabwe.

“In no area inhabited by blacks were there any systems of individual freehold of land. There were only guaranteed rights of usage inside the territory of tribal leaders. The different tribal groups were separated by large sectors of uninhabited land so that the constant sub-division of tribes and the occupation by them of uninhabited land was possible. Because of the slow southward movement of tribes, a specific area was seldom inhabited for more than fifty years by the same people. The same area would frequently be inhabited by different tribes one after the other. If war between these tribes – through which tribal cohesion was sometimes destroyed – is taken into account, the question arises as to just how long a certain vaguely-defined piece of land would have to be inhabited before a legal right to that land would be established.”

- Professor R.D. Coertze, former head of the Department of Anthropology and Archaeology at the University of Pretoria, quoted from Property Rights in South Africa, commissioned by the Transvaal Agricultural Union South Africa. (1999)

* There were 20 000 job losses in South Africa in the first quarter of 2003. Less than 6,5 million of South Africa’s 44,8 million people were formally employed by March 2003. South Africa’s third-largest singular employer group is the agricultural sector – although it now employs less than 600 000 people, down by 420 000 since 1992. The October 2001 census shows an estimated South African population of 44,8 million, up from 40,6 million in October 1996, with 79% African, 9,6% European, 2,5% Asian and 8,9% Coloured. The Census estimated that, overall, 43,9% of the SA population surveyed was “economically inactive”. The African population has 47,1% unemployment.

- Statistics South Africa, official government website: http://www.statssa.gov.za/specialprojects/census2001

* South Africa’s unemployment rate increased by 54% between 1996 and 2003. The total number of unemployed people increased by 136%. Yet the total number of employed people rose by 25% in the same period. In other words, there were some 2,3 million more jobs in 2003 than there were in 1996. Why so much unemployment?

- SA Institute of Race Relations, Fast Facts, Nov. 2003.

* South Africa’s commercial farmers are among the best in the world, if not the best. They have to contend with a plethora of problems – the vagaries of the weather, constant drought, rising taxes on everything from the rain on their trees to municipal levies (for which they receive nothing), and excessively high toll road costs. South Africa’s land tenure laws make it difficult to dismiss workers, let alone remove these workers from their properties, and they are besieged by land invasions and squatters. They are the victims of crop and stock theft, more murders per capita of their group than any other community on earth. They are burnt out, their fences are destroyed, and they are intimidated to the point where many have abandoned their farms. The government’s minimum wage policy has resulted in a fifty-percent drop in farm labour numbers, and many of these ex-employees now wander the cities looking for work.

“It is said that white farmers currently own 87% of South Africa’s land. When one deducts the 25% owned by the government, the remaining figure of 62% must be viewed against a background of other vital factors. Less than 12% of SA’s land is suitable for cultivation. South Africa has an average annual rainfall of only 464 mm, against a world average of 857 mm. Twenty one percent of the country has a total rainfall of less than 200 mm annually, 48% between 200 mm and 600 mm, while only 31% records more than 600 mm. Thus 65% of the country has an average annual rainfall of 500 mm – usually regarded as the absolute minimum for successful dry-land farming.”

“Some of the best and most fertile, high rainfall land in South Africa is found in six traditional black areas, but most farmers there produce only for their own consumption. More than 70% of South Africa, including more than 100 medium-sized towns, is dependent on underground water sources, tapped through the use of sophisticated borehole equipment. This represents about 13% of all the water used in the country. It should be remembered that huge tracts of land in South Africa, particularly in the northern areas, would be completely useless if it were not for these deep boreholes. Cattle farming in these areas depends almost completely on these underground water sources.

South Africa’s greatest export is topsoil, which is stripped away at a rate four times higher than the world average, and 20 times faster than it can be replaced. Thousands of tons of eroded earth disappear into oceans every year. Most of this scourge is due to poor land management.”

- Mr. Willie Lewies, TAU-SA Vice President, The Citizen 19 May 2000

* Many academics concerned about land reform place the emphasis on settling millions of peasants onto farm land. In the numerous tomes presented at conferences and summits, and repeated in South Africa’s media, this ideology wins the day. The reason for this resettlement policy is “poverty alleviation”, but no empirical data is given proving this notion to be successful. Whole sectors at South Africa’s academic community are devoted to this premise. We have found that the government’s “resettlement” policy in point of fact creates more poverty. We wonder why so much money is spent on theorizing about the purported efficacy of resettlement without any academic institution actually investigating the results of government’s handover policy, which we have now done, albeit without a bevy of researchers and unlimited funding. This would have been a salutary exercise for South Africa’s academic community to undertake! Surely the “poverty alleviation” theory should be backed by hard evidence that it works? In addition, Non-Governmental Organisations (NGO’s) spend their time and their overseas-funded budgets supporting and indeed initiating the handover of productive farmland in South Africa to the so-called dispossessed. These groups, one of which is the Nkuzi Development Association, are actively involved in pressing communities to claim land, whatever the consequences. Are the taxpayers in Norway, Denmark, Britain, Canada and the United States not concerned that their money is used to reduce farm production in South Africa? The activities of these NGO’s could eventually result in serious food shortages in South Africa. Are these same governments prepared to feed 45 million people when famine strikes this part of the world?
 
#67
#67
Chapter XVII, part 2:

* ?Do young black people really want to farm? Not according to an informal think tank meeting conducted at the invitation of the UN’s Food and Agricultural Organisation’s regional office in Harare, Zimbabwe. This get-together was held in Pretoria on 1 and 2 March 2003 and was attended by international land reform and agricultural luminaries from the United Kingdom, the Human Sciences Research Council of South Africa, South African university academics, and representatives from Mozambique, Malawi, Zimbabwe, Namibia and Senegal. They declared they wanted to analyse the constraints of sustainable land reform. Despite apartheid and colonialism, they said, it was becoming increasingly difficult for donors to justify the allocation of aid resources to land reform in southern Africa. (This is of course reflected in the South African government’s paucity of funding for land reform. After the Zimbabwe experience, countries are not going to throw good money after bad.)

It was agreed the Zimbabwe situation was a total disaster. More than one and a half million people lost their livelihood as a result of the Zimbabwe government’s policy of grabbing white farms. What then for South Africa?

A rigorous re-examination of the economic rationale for redistribution is essential. Hard evidence is required if current dysfunctional policies are to be challenged and alternative paradigms advanced.”

This we believe we have accomplished with this book, at least as a start. Small-scale farming came under the microscope. The committee declared that this type of farming could not compete production-wise, locally or in world markets, with large-scale commercial farming. Post-transfer support (or the lack of it) came in for a drubbing. There has been a movement away from small-scale farming in Africa, said the committee, and the question they asked is – do today’s young people (say 15 – 45 years) want to be farmers? This of course was a rhetorical question, because evidence throughout Africa shows young people want jobs, and they eschew the agricultural life. Our research revealed a disappointment by older black people in the young people of today who are in many instances seen as worthless, lazy and unprepared to do a day’s work. The last two years have seen a discernible increase in the number of youths involved in crime, and particularly young men. (Citizen 12 September 2003) This is borne out by the fact that most if not all crimes against farmers are committed by young black men. Indeed, most of the crimes committed in South Africa are by the same group, according to political observer Dan Roodt. His column to this effect was spiked by the liberal Afrikaans newspaper Rapport editor Tim du Plessis. Pity, because it is the truth and it needs to be publicly declared.

It is a disgrace that America’s wealthy Ford Foundation funds local land NGO’s in their efforts to encourage people to claim productive farmland, in many cases without a legal basis. In one instance, the South African Legal Resources Center, heavily funded by this American foundation, has kept up its legal fight against South African farmers in the Mabaalstat case. The Baphiring community/tribe owned 7 000 hectares and, upon removal, received 17 000 hectares of prime agricultural land, together with monetary compensation and infrastructure. Now they are claiming back the 7 000 hectares although the chief of the Baphiring tribe testified in court that he will not relinquish one inch of the 17 000 hectares. Land claim legislation specifies that if compensation was granted after a removal, then there is no valid claim. So far it has cost farmers who are rejecting this claim R800 000, while those who are instituting a frivolous claim pay not a penny in legal fees! We will be investigating the role of the Ford Foundation and other overseas funders of land claimants in the coming year.

* What about land reform in other countries?

From our research, one glaring fact is apparent. Land reform depends on the ability and willingness of the recipients to farm, or to adapt to farming. Chile for example introduced serious land reform in 1958 where land barons’ farms were split up and given to small farmers. This eventuated in a four-phase process, and with the exception of the third phase under communist President Salvador Allende, the process was successful. The old owners were compensated, and technical assistance and research was introduced to help the new owners. During the fourth phase under the government of Augusto Pinochet, land was set aside for the indigenous Indian population. Chile now has the most advanced economy in South America - the majority of its population is educated and hard-working.

During a question and answer session at a recent seminar on land invasions held at the Institute for Security Studies in Pretoria, Mr. Edward Lahiff of the University of the Western Cape was asked where land reform was successful. He mentioned his own country Ireland, and certain Asian lands. Ireland’s history was always one of a political struggle for land, but its people adapted to modern farming because they had the innate capacity to do so. Such was the case in Asia. Most Asians are hard workers. The example of South Korea’s rise from the ashes in salutary. In the mid-1950s, Korea’s per capita income was $146 (on a par with Ghana and Nigeria). It had come out of 35 years of Japanese colonization, and was plunged into a civil war which left 25% of the population as refugees.

With no resources and virtually no agricultural economy and a population of 45 million (74% of whom were illiterate), it changed into the 12th largest economy in the world within 40 years. It had become the second largest shipbuilder in the world, and the fourth largest maker of electronics in the world. It was the planet’s largest steel producer while it’s GDP grew on average at 9.1/2% per annum. (Business Day Oct. 4, 2002) The small island of Hokkaido is Japan’s most productive agricultural area – it produces 11% of the country’s food. There are 5,6 million people on this island, the size of Pennsylvania. Hokkaido is subject to frequent earthquakes (the last one was in September 2003). The average farmer plot is 16,1 hectares. Hokkaido’s land reform program consisted of developing the land from scratch, and placing farmers on small plots as far back as the turn of the previous century. Why does Hokkaido work? Because the people make it work, just as the Japanese have created one of the world’s leading economies on a rocky, earthquake-prone series of islands, with few natural resources.

Contrast this with Brazil, one of the largest countries in area in the world. One per cent of Brazil’s farmers own 46% of the country’s arable land. (Reported during the Earth Summit in September 2002). Agri-business in Brazil accounts for 27% of the country’s GDP. But in early 2002, the Brazilian government succumbed to peasant violence and pressure and introduced a land reform program which was to liberate millions.

This program was a monumental failure. It was precipitated with farm invasions. In one of the most ambitious land reform programs ever, Brazil parceled out 18 million hectares to 542,000 families – nearly 2 million people. It cost the Brazilian taxpayers $6,5 billion, and these peasants were supposed to become “family farmers”. The Landless Workers Movement was at the forefront of the land invasions and farm violence which forced the Brazilian government’s hand. (This same movement was in South Africa giving advice to local land activists!) What Newsweek (21 January 2002) calls “partial surveys” revealed that in some areas, up to half of the new landowners left their plots - Newsweek declared that most new settlers were welfare cases. “The vast majority cannot feed themselves. Their collective output doesn’t even get tallied into Brazil’s $80 billion a year agricultural production.”

In the last three decades, Brazil became an agricultural powerhouse. Large-scale commercial farming produced the 100 million tons of crops which brought in the annual $80 billion. This commercial farm sector accounts for 61% of Brazil’s internationally-traded farm goods. As in South Africa, most of the hand-over farms collapsed. Equipment rusted, people didn’t pay for electricity. And as in South Africa, political activists purported to speak for “disinherited” Brazilians and said that land reform “shouldn’t be measured by an economic yardstick”. The present government of Luiz Lula da Silva is under pressure to fast track more land reform, despite the disasters of the past.

Brazil’s indigenous Indians have now invaded border farmland. They have claimed 12% of the country’s productive farms. (BBC, 9 January 2004). Where a country has a mass of people who are virtually unemployable, they cry for land as a last resort. They do not have the capabilities to become involved in other aspects of their country’s economy. They are unskilled and cannot compete. Western people in countries like the US, Canada and Australia, for example, do not demand land, even though they are landless. They are employable in other sectors of the economy. Only 2% of the US population farms, while the rest work in that country’s other sectors. South Africa is unfortunately similar to Brazil, Venezuela and Peru (where 50% of the population lives in extreme poverty and where infant mortality is 78%).

A well-known media commentator was recently heard to say that what is happening on South Africa’s farms “is a small price to pay for stability in South Africa”. Well, it is not a small price, and stability will not be guaranteed if famine stares us in the face.
 
#68
#68
After all the violence and the double talk
There's just a song in all the trouble and the strife
You do the walk, you do the walk of life
Yeah you do the walk of life

"Music is the one incorporeal
entrance into the higher world
of knowledge which comprehends
mankind but which mankind
cannot comprehend."
-- Ludwig van Beethoven

Don Williams was a big hit in Zimbabwe, but that had no effect on the marxist despot Mugabe and his band of thugs who ruled (and rule) by terror and deception.

Best book on what happened in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe. (even before that what happened to the original white settlers there is horrid, Boer women and children were starved to death in some of the world's first concentration camps which were run by the British.)

THE GREAT BETRAYAL by Ian smith of Rhodesia

partial synopsis with excerpts;

His dramatic rebellion against the Crown forfeited the
support of the British establishment, but earned him the
admiration of many ordinary people. Smith devoted his
life to defeating sanctions and the armed onslaught of
African Nationalists.

He finally managed to bring majority rule to Rhodesia in 1979. His successor, Bishop Muzorewa, refused to be advised by Ian Smith and fell for the guile of Lord Carrington instead.

The marxist Robert Mugabe took over the reins of power shortly afterwards, exactly as Smith had warned he would.

Ian Smith brings his story to the present day by detailing excesses of power by President Mugabe, and revealing the way in which Mugabe has crushed his Matabele opposition to create the virtual dictatorship which exists in Zimbabwe today.

The British efforts to prevent Rhodesian independence under responsible government hinged on their claim that it was racially biased and the African majority would have no say in running the country. This was a false premise, as Smith explains:

Going back to the original Rhodesian constitution of 1923, there was no racial connotation to the franchise, and from that date there have been people of every race, colour and creed on the voters’ roll.

The next step came forty years later with the 1961 constitution, and this embodied the addition of a ‘B’ roll with a debased franchise qualification especially designed to cater for our black people. The normal roll, or ‘A’ roll as it was now called, remained open to all irrespective of race, colour or creed.

So this new constitution, far from trying to entrench our white people, did the reverse, and facilitated and encouraged the participation of our black people.

The constitution was accepted by, and carries the signatures of, representatives of the British Government, the Rhodesian Government, and the black nationalist leaders.

It enshrined the principle of ‘unimpeded progress to majority rule’ and the British representatives involved in drawing up the constitution estimated that it would culminate in a black majority government within ten to fifteen years.

If this is the manner in which white Rhodesians attempted to perpetuate their rule of the country, their incompetence, not to say stupidity, was most remarkable. (p. 103)

In April, 1979, Bishop Muzorewa was voted into power, and Smith, who had been preparing for retirement, changed his mind and decided to stay in politics and assist the new and inexperienced leaders.

At first it seemed that the British Government, now led by Margaret Thatcher, would recognise the new government and lift sanctions. British observers had confirmed in their reports that the elections had been free and fair.

Then, in June, it was announced that the USA would not lift sanctions. Smith comments:

Carter’s hypocrisy and rank dishonesty was unbelievable and unforgivable.

He advanced the reason that the removal of sanctions would be to the prejudice of our country... it was obvious to any thinking person that he had only one objective in mind: winning himself black votes in the coming presidential election. (p 306)

Once Muzorewa had been persuaded to agree to a new election, the British Government continued to make empty promises that they would ensure a free and fair election.

Prompted mainly by their desire to be rid of the Rhodesian problem once and for all, they allowed Mugabe’s ZANU to intimidate the voters without fear of being disqualified, despite earlier promises to act decisively if intimidation were to take place.

For Smith, one of the worst offenders was Carrington:

During my world of politics I have come into contact
with my fair share of devious characters, but I regard
Carrington as the most two-faced of them all. (p. 365)

They had also failed to act on the evidence given to them of over a thousand cases of ZANU intimidation. Smith describes the basic method used by ZANU:

The poor, gullible tribesman, already bemused by an
election which he was unable to comprehend, extending over three days with intimidation rampant, was instructed by ZANU(PF), prior to the election, that the first day was for Mugabe, the second for Muzorewa and the third for Nkomo.

Then the day and evening preceding the election, the messages went out through the ZANU(PF) party machine, that everybody must vote tomorrow, i.e. the first day, which they had previously instructed was for Mugabe.

The vast majority voted that day - they had been warned of the consequences if they did not. (p. 354)

Despite all their efforts to ensure a free and fair election, the Rhodesians were ultimately forced to accept the fact that Mugabe and his ZANU(PF) were now in power, and that life was about to change considerably.

The new regime now began to openly provoke the whites, telling the blacks that if whites did not support ZANU, the blacks were entitled to seek retribution!

The policy of reconciliation was fast fading as Mugabe began to feel that his grip on power was strong enough to act with impunity. He began to make speeches attacking the whites and generally inciting racial hatred against them. More whites were killed, and emigration rose to 10,000 per month.

In the razzias against the Matabele, conducted by Mugabe’s ruthless North-Korean trained private army, over 30,000 people were killed.

Mugabe’s government now openly ignored high court decisions, imprisoned whites without trial, and Mugabe himself attacked the whites in his speeches.

Legislation was passed giving Mugabe the right to "declare anything done illegally to be legal and anything done legally to be illegal, and if he thinks any election result to be wrong he may declare it null and void."

Mugabe had obviously read the works of Lewis Carroll carefully.

When elections were held in 1985 opposition supporters had their windows smashed, and at least three people were killed.

In the election of 1990, opposition candidates received visits from the CIO (Central Intelligence Organisation) and were given a clear message - withdraw from the election or their families would get the message... Many saw the light in time to avoid the violence and killing that was now openly advocated by ZANU officials as the only way to ensure a new ZANU victory at the polls.

Killers who shot and assaulted political opponents were initially caught by the police, but if they were ZANU members, Mugabe simply pardoned them and they were set free.

The police were powerless in the face of Mugabe’s stranglehold on the country.

Smith also exposes the land appropriation tactics of Mugabe’s Government - although there were over 2 million acres of farmland available, with another 1 million readily available from willing sellers, this did not fit ZANU’s vote-gathering tactic of claiming that "white racists”" still owned all the best land and had to be forced to hand it over.

There was, in fact, so much land available that it became an embarrassment to the Government, which was unable to dispose of it all! The solution was simple it was allocated to ZANU party officials, swelling the coffers of the already wealthy party leadership.

As the economy rapidly went bankrupt and became ever more dependent on loans and handouts, Mugabe’s solution was to raise the defence budget from Z$115 million to Z$1,3 billion, award himself and his wealthy minsters a 64% salary increase, and buy a Z$200 million helicopter to use for campaigning and personal trips...

A collection of written/photo/video essays on southern Africa. (note, those in red may be particularly gruesome.)

(to be continued)
 
#69
#69
(continued)


Graphic documentation of the work of Mugabe's communist henchmen in Zimbabwe.


Article on recent history of Zimbabwe under the rule of marxist Mugabe.

excerpts;

In 2000, about 4,000 large-scale commercial farmers owned some 70 percent of Zimbabwe's arable land. Nearly two thirds of these farmers had bought their farms after independence, and thus held titles issued not by Ian Smith or the British colonial regime but by the Mugabe government.

Mugabe decided on what he called "fast-track land reform" only in February of 2000, after he got shocking results in a constitutional referendum: though he controlled the media, the schools, the police, and the army, voters rejected a constitution he put forth to increase his power even further.

Of the 4,000 large-scale commercial farmers in business three years ago, all but 500 have been forced off their land. Most Zimbabweans (including white farmers) say that land reform was both necessary and inevitable. The tragedy of Mugabe's approach is that it has harmed those whom a well-ordered, selective redistribution program could and should have helped. Generally the farms have not been given to black farm managers or farm workers. Indeed, because of their association with the opposition, more than a million farm workers and their dependents have been displaced, and they are now at grave risk of starvation. In fact, the beneficiaries of the land seizures are, with few exceptions, ruling-party officials and friends of the President's. Although Mugabe's people seem to view the possession of farms as a sign of status (the Minister of Home Affairs has five; the Minister of Information has three; Mugabe's wife, Grace, and scores of influential party members and their relatives have two each), these elites don't have the experience, the equipment, or, apparently, the desire to run them. About 130,000 formerly landless peasants helped the ruling elites to take over the farms, but now that the dirty work is done, many of them are themselves being expelled.

The drop-off in agricultural production is staggering. Maize farming, which yielded more than 1.5 million tons annually before 2000, is this year (2005) expected to generate just 500,000 tons. Wheat production, which stood at 309,000 tons in 2000, will hover at 27,000 tons this year. Tobacco production, too, which at 265,000 tons accounted for nearly a third of the total foreign-currency earnings in 2000, has tumbled, to about 66,000 tons in 2003.

Mugabe's belief that he can strengthen his flagging popularity by destroying a resented but economically vital minority group is one that dictators elsewhere have shared. Paranoid about their diminishing support, Stalin wiped out the wealthy kulak farming class, Idi Amin purged Uganda's Indian commercial class, and, of course, Hitler went after Jewish businesses even though Germany was already reeling from the Depression.
------------------------------------------------

Mugabe chooses successor, the "The Butcher of Matabeleland" (2003)

Mnangagwa masterminded the slaughter of more than
25,000 civilians opposed to Mugabe in Matabeleland
in the mid-1980s and was also largely responsible
for the controversial land reform programme that
resulted in attacks on white farmers by army veterans
who seized their property.

He added: "He [Mugabe] wants Emmerson Mnangagwa to
take-over, and although there are other people in
line for the job, I can’t see either the Central
Committee or the Politburo challenging the will of
a man who still somehow controls the police, the
army and most important of all, the CIO, which has
been responsible for thousands of murders and
political assassinations since independence in 1980."

"We must never forget that between those dreadful
years 1982 and 1987 when Mugabe unleashed the North
Korean-trained Fifth Brigade of the Zimbabwe National
Army and let hooligans in uniform slaughter upwards
of 25,000 black civilians because they opposed his
rule, it was Mnangagwa who stood beside him and ran
the CIO."

Last year, Mnangagwa, who also heads up Mugabe’s
vast business empire in the Democratic Republic
of Congo (DRC), led a government and ruling party
delegation to a meeting of Thabo Mbeki’s African
National Congress party in Pretoria.
-----------------------------------------------

Idi Amin, another murderous muslim/marxist/fascist in Uganda


But the West's blind eye toward Amin was such that, as the U.S. ambassador to Uganda at the time, Thomas Melady, recently noted, the (supposedly) human rights-oriented administration of future Nobel Peace laureate Jimmy Carter refused to impose even the most minimal sanctions (such as on Ugandan coffee) on Amin's regime. And this was an administration that unhesitatingly penalized Argentina for minimal human rights abuses against educated, middle-class Marxist terrorists.


That Amin was a member of Uganda's small Muslim community allowed him ultimately, after sometime in Libya, to reach safe and comfortable asylum in Saudi Arabia. He was granted asylum, thereby avoiding a trial in his own country for the 100,000 to 300,000 murders committed by his regime, in the name of umma (worldwide Muslim community) solidarity.

Reporters describe the Saudi-funded exile's life in Jeddah as one of a comfortable suburban home, driving Cadillacs, BMWs and Mercedes-Benzes, lunching at the Meridien, having tea at the Sofitel, and swimming and taking massages at the Intercontinental..

The UN (which, interestingly, has been less vocal about Amin than it has been about Milosevic or Mladic), and the human rights NGOs were all disturbingly mute about Amin's comfortable asylum.

Because Amin has enjoyed exile as a Muslim, the world must tolerate it, fearful as the West is of holding Muslims to the same human rights standard as others are held to.
 
#71
#71
Is this a great thread, or The greatest thread?

Using the Socratic method, one good question deserves another. Mine is; 'what does the ANC and ACORN have in common????'

Sunday December 7, 2008, Angola, Africa.

ASSOCIATION OF COMMUNITY ORGANIZATIONS FOR REFORM NOW (ACORN)


The glorious history of marxism on Earth, in easy to read illustrated, understandable wrods that each and every moron can quickly wrap his small mind around.

Forget the year 2525, let's take a quick look at 2020.

From todays ACORNS we will see modern Republican moderate trees in the future Democratic forests of Amerika and Afrika.
 
#74
#74
On to Ethiopia and how the marxists screwed up yet another country in Africa.

Mengistu found guilty of Ethiopian genocide.

Radio Havana proclaimed it a great victory when Mengustu seized power and they demonized Haile Selassie, making all sorts of untrue claims about his character.

Just as in every marxist coup in history, the new regime assassinated or terrorized to silence all the top possible political opponents and went on to make things far worse or the population as a whole and brought the people of the new "workers paradise" into famine. In this case about a million starved to death in Ethiopia. As in other cases those who were the starving ones were incidentally also the ones who weren't all that enthusiastic about living in a workers paradise.

Another fallout is that the population of Ethiopia has more than doubled in the past twenty five years, exacerbating the main problem they had to begin with.

The main reason for this was that the government policy was of tying the size of land plot granted to how many children a family had, making it seemingly profitable for families to have more children.

Of course you couldn't sell that land or even move to another plot or have any of the sorts of freedoms as advanced in western societies and you couldn't get a loan on land you didn't own to buy seed, fertilizer or implements with which to farm. Exports went to zero of course which is a death knell for any country whose main export is food stuffs.

At any rate Mengistu has nothing to worry about as long as the darling of socialists such and Jimmy Carter and Andrew Young, Mugabe can hold on to power in Zimbabwe and the way things are going he will not only hold on to power, his cronies in South Africa will hold sway until that country has gone the way of all marxist socialist paradises. ie; victims of the four horsemen of the apocalypse, war, famine, pestilence and death.

Don't mean to be depressing, however wouldn't it be intelligent for us to discuss such things before we might fall into the same trap ourselves here in this country??

Would it not be more intelligent of us to form a more intelligent, truly humanitarian foreign policy based on reality rather than narrow ideological themes based on falsehoods???
 

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