ANC planning Zimbabwe style land invasions after World Cup
29 March, 2010 01:40:00
Zimbabwe Mail
HARARE - South Africa’s ruling party ANC is planning Zimbabwean style land invasions after the FIFA 2010 World Cup, amid reports Zimbabwe’s Zanu PF and War Veterans Association will provide crucial support for the programme, sources in Zimbabwe said on Monday.
Controversial African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL) President, Julius Malema, is set to visit Zimbabwe for a series of meetings with Zanu PF counterparts. The crucial meeting will go a long way in exchanging ideas and preparatory stages for both logistics and mobilisation for sporadic land invations.
A member of the Zanu PF security department told our reporter that the basis of Malema’s visit to Harare is a follow up to a secret discussion between President Mugabe and his South African counterpart Jacob Zuma, three weeks ago.
The source said when South African President Jacob Zuma visited Zimbabwe during the coalition talks between Zanu PF and the MDC, he discussed at length, matters ranging from the British media’s personal attacks on his private life during the recent visit to the United Kingdom and the need to expedite South African land reform.
It is at this stage that Mugabe converted Zuma into his camp, and the two leaders agreed to join hands in actively assisting each other in the land reform and indigenisation process.
This week, a high-level delegation in the South African security forces, intelligence and media with close links to the ruling party ANC are travelling to Zimbabwe and they will spend three months training at the Zimbabwe National Army’s Staff College.
Senior Zimbabwe National army officers who led Zimbabwe’s land invasions will train their South African counterparts and impart knowledge based on their experiences.
“High rates of population growth create unemployment faster than jobs, increase the mouths to be fed faster than the production of rice paddies, squatters faster than people housed in modern facilities, excrement faster than sewers can be built.” |
A source said, South African land invasion factor is the reason why Zimbabwean President Mugabe has identified Jabulani Sibanda as the prefered choice to lead the War Veterans Association in the association’s reported power struggles.
Zanu PF Youth League national secretary for administration Leslie Ncube said Malema was visiting Zimbabwe to discuss and share ideas on "youth empowerment and revolutionary tactics".
"The ANCYL president will be arriving next week. It will be a three-day visit and other executive members of the ANC youth league will accompany him," Ncube said.
The Zanu PF youth official said the ANC and his party have enjoyed cordial relationships that date back to the liberation struggle adding these ties would be further strengthened by Malema’s visit.
"We share the same revolutionary history and they (visiting delegates) are coming to learn from our agrarian reform and indigenisation.
"The ANC is about to expand its land reforms, and we will share advice and discuss how resources should be equitably distributed to the youth and also how they can benefit from natural resources such as mining," Ncube said.
Speaking to South African media, Gugule Nkwinti, the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform accused white farmers here of scuttling the land reform programme by frustrating government’s willing buyer willing seller policy through inflating prices.
He warned South Africa risks sinking into chaos as the patience of new black farmers is running thin as evidenced by sporadic farm invasions.
"If South Africans who own land don’t recognise the reality on the ground and can no walk the mind with government in terms of what is proposed right now then in fact they are the ones who will be responsible for creating conditions of chaos which can be worse than what has been witnessed in Zimbabwe," said Nkwinti.
Africa’s economic giant needs R 75 billion to acquire 80 million hectares of land by 2014 but this target will not be reached as national coffers are running dry as a result of a litany of service delivery issues that needs to be addressed such as a long housing back log, water and electricity deliveries to millions of households.
Nkwinti said the South African government is working on a policy aimed at addressing the land inequalities urging farm owners to be more flexible in land redistribution negotiations.
He said the new policy is about preventing going the disastrous way of distributing land like the one witnessed in Zimbabwe where President Robert Mugabe’s government forcibly took land from previous white owners in chaotic scenes that left many dead since the inception of the programme in 2000.
"This about preventing Zimbabwe," said Nkwinti.
He did not elaborate on whether his government will consider amending the constitution to enable it to forcibly take land like what happened in their northern neighbours where the government had to pass legislation to change the constitution allowing it to compulsorily acquire land from white farmers.
Nkwinti said just like in Zimbabwe where about 4000 white farmers owned most of the country’s arable land, land in South Africa is concentrated in the hands of a few land owners, most of whom are foreigners.
"We have a major monopoly of land ownership in South Africa and we must break that monopoly," said Nkwinti.
Nkwinti earlier this month told parliament that the government was adopting a "use it or lose it" policy to encourage increased production capacity but his weekend comments appear to be a shift towards a more radical policy.
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Thousands of poor black South Africans, most of whom still live in abject poverty because of the apartheid era system are waiting for land promised at independence in 1994 and often repeated in campaign speeches by current President Jacob Zuma in his quest for political office last year.
Just like Zimbabwe, South Africa inherited an unjust land ownership system from the apartheid governments which parceled out all the best farm land to white farmers, leaving blacks to arid land not fit for agricultural purposes.
The South African government has in the past said it will not go it the Zimbabwe way and often move quickly to crush land related protests and attempts at invading farms owned by white farmers though it has largely been unable to stop farm murders but this time it appears it is starting to feel the people power.
Farm seizures are blamed for plunging Zimbabwe – once a net exporter of the staple maize grain – into severe food shortages since 2001 after black peasant farmers resettled on former white farms failed to maintain production because the government failed to support them with financial resources, inputs and skills training.
» » » » [Zimbabwe Mail]
Mugabe is their darling
Zim dictator regarded as hero by Africa’s upper middle classes
Aidan Hartley, The Spectator
25 October 2003
In Johannesburg recently I hooked up with Mojo, an old drinking chum from Dar es Salaam, where in the 1980s I was an FT stringer covering the ‘frontline states’ and he was an officer in the ANC’s armed wing, Mkhonto we Sizwe. These days I’m a settler on the land in Kenya, while Mojo has risen to become Lieutenant-General Mojo Matau, South Africa’s chief of military intelligence. At our reunion the beers flowed freely into the night as we remembered the old days. Mojo and I slapped each other on the back and held hands for a bit. Then I asked my friend, this man in the kitchen cabinet of ANC power in the new South Africa, what he thought of Robert Mugabe. At his reply my heart sank. He described Zimbabwe’s President as a hero for what he’s done to white farmers, and a leader who illuminated the path ahead for South Africa. I remonstrated, as I always do, and ended by telling Mojo that I saw myself as an African first, a white second, and that it was my ardent wish to stay on the continent. ‘Your only home,’ countered Mojo, gently taking my hand again, ‘is England.’
Is this the real story behind Thabo Mbeki’s ‘quiet diplomacy’ towards Zimbabwe?
Mugabe is seen as a leader who illuminated the path ahead for South Africa |
Mugabe, to say it without beating around the liberal bush, is a hero to many of my black African friends. Most of the people I’m talking about are from the upper middle class, inheritors of the African kingdom after colonialism. According to one Zambian, who is among my very oldest of comrades, ‘Mugabe is Shaka Zulu.’
Mugabe is ‘speaking for black people worldwide,’ writes the South African journalist Harry Mashabela. Regarded as a solid liberal in his long career, and writing in the Helen Suzman Foundation’s September newsletter, Mashabela pointed to the adoration Mugabe won at the World Summit on Sustainable Development in Johannesburg last year:‘The applause and standing ovation were a tacit expression of appreciation of the courageous stand Mugabe has taken in trying to resolve the critical land problems facing his country.’
‘The Zimbabwe-style explosion in South Africa over the land issue may be delayed ...but that it shall happen some time in the future is beyond question.’ -- Lieutenant-General Mojo Matau, Former Chief of military intelligence, and Officer in the ANC’s armed wing, Mkhonto we Sizwe |
Indeed, Mugabe and his lieutenants win ovations across Africa: at a summit of the Southern African SADC trade bloc in August, or at an ANC conference ten months ago, when President Thabo Mbeki got up and hugged Zanu-PF loyalist Emmerson Mnangagwa. Mugabe laps it up. During Zimbabwe’s sham elections in 2002, a correspondent asked him if he thought the violent land invasions hadn’t damaged his image. He replied, ‘If the perception is that of Europeans, well, I suppose you are right to say my reputation has gone down. But in terms of Africa, go anywhere and I am a hero.’
» » » » [Excerpt: ‘Zimbabwe style farm invasions may be delayed ... but will definitely happen in SA's future’ - Lt. Gen. Mojo Matau, Former Chief of SANDF Mil. Intel]
Farmers stunned by new land policy
Mar 14 2010 08:16
Hennie Duvenhage & David van Rooyen, Fin24
Johannesburg - The department of rural development and land reform has kept farmers completely in the dark about plans to declare all productive agricultural land a national asset, an industry body has said.
Agri SA will meet the department about the issue on Monday, even though the plan has already been submitted to the departmental portfolio committee.
In its strategic plan for up to 2013 the department said it is considering the possibility of declaring all productive agricultural land a national asset.
Current owners will then receive rights to use the land on either a temporary or permanent basis.
Hans van der Merwe, chief executive of Agri SA, has said his organisation has not been consulted about this plan.
» » » » [Excerpt: ANC/Gov. to Nationalize all Agricultural Land: Declare it as National Asset; Farmers will lose Ownership Rights..]
Rhodesia to Zimbabwe
Transvaal Agricultural Union: "South Africa Bulletin"
Forty four years ago on 11 November 1965, Prime Minister Ian Smith of the then Rhodesia announced a Unilateral Declaration of Independence from Britain. Smith's party the Rhodesian Front knew the pitfalls ahead if they were to succumb to British government pressure for majority rule.
Their predictions of course came true - Zimbabwe became the basket case of Africa. Its leader Robert Mugabe's tyranny, cruelty and barbarism equalled that of Idi Amin, and he ruined what was a superlative example of how a few talented and dedicated men who loved their country could bring plenty where hunger and pestilence had ruled.
It is sobering to look back at the state of agriculture in the old Rhodesia, at what a few farmers achieved in a relatively short time. When we compare then and now, it beggars belief that such successes should have been sacrificed on the altar of political correctness and a Western need to rid itself of African colonies, come what may.
Dr. Mick Gammon has written the following in the magazine Rhodesians Worldwide and it is good and even necessary to remember what Rhodesia was, and what Zimbabwe is today.
"The Zimbabwe government's campaign to obliterate commercial agriculture, under the guise of agrarian reform but in reality in the interest of retaining power through illegal and violent means, has been largely effective. The tragic suffering of Zimbabwe's commercial farmers must be documented, lest distortions of the facts become accepted history.
VIRGIN LAND
The first white hunters, traders and missionaries who in the 19th century came to the region which was to become Rhodesia and subsequently Zimbabwe, found a land devoid of infrastructure. The wheel was not yet in use. Early travellers recorded travelling often for days without seeing any human habitation. With a population of about a quarter of a million people at the time, indeed most of the land was not occupied.
Commercial farming started in the 1890s on what was for the most part virgin land. There were no roads or railways, there was no electricity or telephone, there were no fences, boreholes, pumps, windmills, dams, irrigation schemes, there were no cattle dips, barns or other farm buildings.
» » » » [Excerpt: From Rhodesia's Kings Feast Breadbasket... to Zimbabwe's Bitter Harvest Basketcase]
'Why were we so wrong on Mugabe?' asks Zimbabwe activist
Trevor Grundy, Ecumenical News International
17 December 2009
 Auret with John Paul II in March 1979. Centre is Bishop Tobias Chiginya of Gwelo who visited the Vatican with Auret on the eve of Zimbabwe's independence. Picture: Courtesy: Mike Auret. |
London (ENI). A Roman Catholic human rights activist who denounced the atrocities of white minority rule in the country then called Rhodesia, has charted what he describes as the "descent to tyranny" of Zimbabwe's post-independence ruler Robert Mugabe.
For more than 20 years until 1999, Mike Auret worked for Zimbabwe's Catholic Commission for Justice and Peace, set up by the country's Catholic bishops.
In his new book, "From Liberator to Dictator: An Insider's Account of Robert Mugabe's Descent into Tyranny", Auret records how he met Mugabe several times and was captivated by the man's intelligence and apparent sincerity.
"My admiration for him grew with each contact and in the months ahead I found myself putting him on a pedestal - a position from which I found it most difficult to displace him in the years that followed, despite everything that happened," said Auret.
But Auret was shattered when he discovered what happened in the Matabeleland and Midlands regions of Zimbabwe between 1983 and 1987. More than 20 000 men, women and children accused of being "dissidents" were killed to wipe out the power base of Mugabe's main rival in the liberation struggle, Joshua Nkomo. Almost all of those killed were Ndebeles, members of Nkomo's ethnic group.
They were killed by a North Korean trained branch of the military called the Fifth Brigade. Its members were Shona, who belonged to Mugabe's ethnic group.
» » » » [Excerpt: Emigrated Liberal White Zimbabweans pontificate: “Why were we so wrong on Mugabe?”; while Zimbabwe White Farmers are being Exterminated..]
Mugabe and the White African: The Last Stand
Robert Mugabe’s 'land redistribution’ policy, under which Zimbabwe’s white-owned farms have been brutally plundered, has ruined thousands of lives and turned once-productive areas into wastelands. A new documentary tells the moving story of one family, their bodies beaten, their home torched, who refuse to roll over. Graham Boynton reports
Graham Boynton, Telegraph.UK
Published: 10:26AM GMT 08 Jan 2010
There is a moment in Mugabe and the White African that suddenly and vividly defines the banality, the infantile pointlessness, of those directing Zimbabwe’s violent collapse into anarchy. Peter Chamada, the son of Mugabe’s political ally Nathan Shamuyarira, has arrived on a white farmer’s land in his shining new ToyotaPrado and is taking photographs on an expensive mobile phone. He glares, wild-eyed with contempt, into the camera and declares, 'This land is now my home. The government has taken it from you people [the white farmers] to redistribute to the poor black majority. This land belongs to the black peasants.’
As the records show, the land taken from some 4,000 productive white Zimbabwean farmers, often with violent force, has been handed almost exclusively to Mugabe’s cronies – pliable judges, air vice-marshals, provincial administrators, girlfriends of ministers and assorted relations such as Chamada. When the white farmer Ben Freeth asks how someone like the expensively dressed Chamada can describe himself as a member of the poor black majority, 'when every time you come here you arrive in a brand-new car’, the raging scion spits out, 'I will sleep here until you are out. We want to deal with friendlier people – the Chinamen, the Indians. We don’t want anything to do with you [white] people.’
» » » » [Excerpt: Zim's Climate of Fear Worse than Gaza, Afghanistan or Iraq...]
» » [BBC's Reporting of White Farm Murders in SA & Zimbabwe]
» » [Africa for the Africans, exterminating White People from Africa]
» » [“We torched your farm - and we'll come back to eat your children...” ]
» » [Mugabe & the White African (Best Doc. British Ind. Film Awards, Dec 2009)]
» » [The secret race war in South Africa that threatens to overshadow the World Cup]
» » [Farm Attack Off. Inv. Report: Farmers tortured and murdered due to “racial hatred”]
» » [Will ‘Africa for Africans’ Grossly Aggravate return of Slavery.Inc & Tribal Mob Justice?]
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