Wikileaks Cable: Zimbabwe White farmers wanted US$20 billion compensation to end land dispute

Wikileaks Cable: Zimbabwe White farmers wanted US$20 billion compensation to end land dispute

Although legal issues exist in the recent spate of farm invasions ... the fate of remaining white farms is ultimately a political rather than a legal issue.... Having run out of options, the CFU appears to be setting down a marker in the hopes of future compensation. Prospects of this of course are dubious.

US Amb to Zim James McGhee & Trevor Gifford, Pres of CFU: Commercial Farmer's Union | Zimbabwe Insider & Wikileaks | 24 September 2012

The Commercial Farmers Union was prepared to accept a US$20 billion compensation package to end the land dispute in Zimbabwe which had rocked the country for more than a decade but Agriculture Minister Joseph Made felt that US$1.5 billion was more than enough.

According to a cable released by Wikileaks: Trevor Gifford, president of the Commercial Farmer's Union, requested a meeting with United States ambassador to Zimbabwe, James McGhee on 15 April 2009, just two months after the formation of the inclusive government, to discuss a shift in strategy his organization was adopting regarding seized and threatened commercial farms in Zimbabwe.

Gifford said the CFU now wanted compensation of up to US$20 billion because his organisation felt that by making the issue compensation-based, rather than property-rights based, farmers stood a chance of taking the emotion out of the discussion and finding common ground with President Robert Mugabe and ZANU-PF leaders.

New York Times: Golden Lining of Zimbabwe Farm Invasion Policy

In Zimbabwe Land Takeover, a Golden Lining

Lydia Polgreen | New York Times | Published: July 20, 2012

HARARE, Zimbabwe — When Roger Boka started his auction business in the 1990s, this city’s tobacco trading floors were hushed places, save the mellifluous patter of the auctioneer. A handful of white farmers, each selling hundreds of bales of tobacco, arrived in sport utility vehicles, checking into the city’s best hotels while waiting for their big checks to be cut.

During this year’s auction season, a very different scene unfolded underneath the cavernous roof of the Bock Tobacco Auction Floors. Each day, hundreds of farmers arrived in minibuses and on the backs of pickup trucks, many with wives and children in tow. They camped in open fields nearby and swarmed to the cacophonous floor to sell their crop. The place was lively and crowded; two women gave birth on the auction floor. The most obvious difference, though, was the color of their faces: every single one of them was black.

FF+ leader Mulder: “Bantu-speakers” no historical land claim to W & NW Cape; ‎'We are all settlers in SA' - DNA scientist

Mulder stirs hornet’s nest in parly debate

2012-02-15 17:13 | CityPress

Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder gave the hornet’s nest of land ownership a sharp political poke in Parliament.

He suggested that black “Bantu-speaking” people had no historical claim to 40% of the country.

“Africans in particular never in the past lived in the whole of South Africa,” he said during debate in the National Assembly on last week’s state of the nation address.

Mulder’s remarks provoked an angry buzz from ruling party benches, which rose in pitch when he then explained: “There is sufficient proof that there were no Bantu-speaking people in the Western Cape and north western Cape.”

These areas formed 40% of South Africa’s land surface, he told MPs.

Mulder serves in President Jacob Zuma’s Cabinet as deputy agriculture minister.

He was responding to the president’s statement in his address on Thursday, that the willing-buyer willing-seller option had “not been the best way to address” land redistribution.

Mulder said the question of land ownership was an emotional issue that had caused many wars.

In the South African context, Bantu-speaking people had moved down the continent from Africa’s equatorial regions, while Europeans had moved up from the Cape. They had met at the Kei River, in the present-day Eastern Cape.

“There are also differences of opinion about the influence of the Difaqane on land ownership. Read the diaries of the Voortrekkers about what they found when they moved into the interior,” he told MPs.

The Sotho word Difaqane – in Zulu, Mfecane – is the term used by historians for a period of internecine warfare involving various tribal groups in the interior of southern Africa during the early to middle 19th century.

Liberation by --Extermination of White Settlers-- Reconciliation: Eviction of Zimbabwe's Last White Farmers

The end of an era for Zimbabwe's last white farmers?

Despite the introduction of a power-sharing government two years ago, state-backed farm seizures have continued. Colin Freeman meets one of the last white farmers still at work in Zimbabwe.

By Colin Freeman, Chegutu, Daily Telegraph
7:00AM BST 26 Jun 2011

Driving through land his family have tended for half a century, Colin Cloete stops to inspect a harvested tobacco field, rows of green stumps sprouting from a terracotta soil.

As a seasoned professional farmer, he knows the field needs to be reploughed before pests infest the weedy growths left behind. As a tired political campaigner, however, he knows it is no longer worth his while.

"We should be replanting these fields now, but I don't know who is going to benefit from the next harvest," he says, shaking his head. "I will probably do it anyway, but I do wonder whether it's worth it."

The Great Betrayal: The Memoirs of Ian Douglas Smith; By Ian Douglas Smith [*Amazon*]

After an 11-year struggle in which their ranks have been murdered, beaten, jailed and bankrupted, the last of Zimbabwe's white farmers are finally facing defeat in their efforts to resist President Robert Mugabe's land-grab programme.

Despite the introduction of a power-sharing government two years ago, state-backed farm seizures have continued, and earlier this month, Mr Cloete lost a final appeal at Zimbabwe's Supreme Court to keep his one remaining property.

Next Monday, he will appear before a local magistrate to answer a charge of trespass, for which the only way to avoid jail will be to pack up and start looking for a new house in Harare, an hour's drive away.

With his departure will also go the hopes of some 300 other white farmers - all that remains of a community that was once 4,000 strong - for whom similar legal challenges had offered some last chance of protection, or at least a stay of execution.

War for Economic Freedom: Expropriation without compensation - ANCYL24

War for Economic Freedom: Expropriation without compensation - ANCYL24

Political report by the ANCYL president to the League's 24th national conference

Julius Malema, ANCYL
16 June 2011

POLITICAL REPORT BY PRESIDENT JULIUS MALEMA TO THE 24TH NATIONAL CONFERENCE OF THE AFRICAN NATIONAL CONGRESS YOUTH LEAGUE, 16 JUNE 2011, GHALLAGER ESTATES, MIDRAND, June 16 2011

Introduction

1. We welcome all delegates and guests to the 24th National Congress of the African National Congress Youth League. We welcome the ANC Youth League back in Johannesburg, because it was here in Johannesburg, 67 years ago that the ANC Youth League was officially launched by one of the South Africa's most outstanding generations of revolutionary freedom fighters, who today are celebrated the world over. We welcome the ANC Youth League back to Johannesburg, particularly Midrand, because the ANCYouth League 1st National General Council happened here in Midrand to do, then, what the NGCis expected to do in August 2010.

2. The ANC Youth League 24th National Congressis South Africa's biggest Congressand one of the most important political gatherings, not only with regards to numbers, but also politically and ideologically. There is nowhere else in South Africa and the African continent where an autonomous youth formation can assemble more than 5000 delegated youth representing branches, regions and provinces in one meeting to discuss the future of their country, the continent and the world. More than 90% of delegates at this Congress come from branches of the ANC Youth League, all of which have a minimum of 100 members and were able to meet in Branch Congresses and General Meetings to mandate delegates to come to discuss and consolidate the programme towards total economic emancipation of the economically oppressed people of South Africa, Africa and the world.

ANCYL24: The war for economic freedom: Expropriation of Land without Compensation (02:20)

3. We welcome you, proud that the organisation we inherited and which is celebrating its 64th Anniversary is now stronger, more stable and ready to face all organisational, political and ideological battles in the war towards consolidation of political and economic freedom in our lifetime. We address this Congress with our heads held up very high, because we speak on behalf of a powerful, militant, radical and revolutionary youth wing of the ANC, which is unapologetically fighting for the working classand the poor of South Africa, Africa and the world. We address this 24th National Congress with our heads held up very high because we did not betray the mandate you gave us at the 23rd National Congress in April and June 2008.

End is Near for Zimbabwe's Last White Farmers - VOA

End Near for Zimbabwe's Last White Farmers

May 30, 2011
Peta Thornycroft | Harare, VOA News

Zimbabwean farmers attend a meeting of white commercial farmers in capital Harare (2010 file photo)

Zimbabwe's Supreme Court heard a case on behalf of three farmers who claimed the constitution excluded confiscation of their land because they bought their properties after the colonial era ended with independence in 1980.

The Supreme Court did not agree and quickly dismissed their application.

One of the farmers, Colin Cloete, a former president of the Commercial Farmers’ Union at the height of often violent land invasions seven years ago, was one of the applicants.

He, like many of his colleagues, has been arrested, harassed and appeared in court many times, to try to stay on his farm.

Like most surviving white farmers, the cost of going to court to try to fight his eviction has been unaffordable.

Looking back over the long and difficult years, Cloete, now 58, said his struggle to remain on his farm did not make economic sense.

Kiddi Malema Amin's “Kill Boers” and “All Whites are Criminals” demagoguery

[SA Farm Attacks]

“We in the ANC have declared all white farms war-zones… white men, women and children are targets, they are part of the military and paramilitary units and the local police force…” -- BBC Monitoring, July 10 1987 and October 28 1986; Transcript of Radio Freedom broadcast on MK's landmine campaign, October 24 1986; Why we're targeting white farmers - ANC (Transcript of Radio Freedom broadcast on MK's landmine campaign, October 24 1986, BBC Monitoring)

“Killing whites is an action that gives hope to blacks and makes white South Africans used to bleeding… such deaths can be beneficial. When blacks have learnt that a white has died in the violence, that kind of thing comes like the drop of rain after a long drought.” – Oliver Tambo to Trevor Huddlestone, New York Times, 24 Jan 1987; Radical Honesty Amicus in Afriforum v. Malema: Mandela & Fanon’s Black Liberation: Absolute Necessity of Violence on Rotting Corpse of Settler

• Malema has all the makings of a demagogue - TAU SA, Politicsweb, 10 May 2011
  
  
• South Africa youth leader says 'criminal' whites stole land from blacks, Telegraph.UK, 09 May 2011
  
  
• Separating Free Speech From Hate in South Africa, New York Times, 30 April 2011
  
  
• Malema: White people are criminals, IOL, 08 May 2011
  
  
• Threat to TAU-SA Advocate family in Malema case, Pretoria News, 18 April 2011

SA's Road to Zimbabwe Hell: Playing Race & Land Cards for Political Advantage

SA is at risk of retracing Zimbabwe’s bloody path

November 16 2010 at 11:45am
By Donwald Pressly, Business Report

One doesn’t know if one is living in a democracy until an election is held, the governing party changes peacefully and one goes to work the following day seamlessly.

Would a President Julius Malema tolerate losing power in 10 years time, once he had clawed his way into office?

Our ruling elite dance with the Zanu-PF regime. They share with it a liberation struggle mentality. Tolerance of a new party coming to power, especially emerging from the union movement like the Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) in Zimbabwe, simply is not on the agenda.

Peter Godwin, author of The Fear: The Last Days of Robert Mugabe and also of When the Crocodile Eats the Sun, said this week that he found it inexplicable that the coverage of the carnage and the political intimidation and electoral manipulation on our doorstep was so poorly documented in the South African media.

South African journalists are the most likely to enter Zimbabwe and carry out their work unharmed – unlike other foreign media – yet for some reason, the horror has been largely ignored, apart from the attacks on white farmers.

‘If I go, I will be a Georgian." - Boer Farmer on Emigrating to Georgia

Boer farmers head for new home in Georgia

Facing the threat of land reform, white South Africans are looking to pastures new

Shaun Walker in Moscow,
Independent.UK
Tuesday, 9 November 2010

South Africa and Georgia have little in common aside from a tradition of wine-making and a turbulent recent history. But a group of white South African farmers say starting a new life in the former Soviet state could be the solution to their troubles at home.

South Africa's 40,000 white farmers, mainly Boers – descendants from Dutch settlers – say they fear that South Africa's government is threatening their livelihoods with land-reform policies. When they first came to Africa, the Boer Voortrekkers, or pioneers, left coastal colonies to forge a path to the interior of the country in search of fertile land. Now some of their descendants believe the answer to their problems might lie thousands of miles away in the Caucasus.

In what would be an extraordinary migration, the Georgian government has invited South Africa's farmers to buy up land in the country for next to nothing in exchange for bringing their expertise and knowledge of modern farming methods.

Papuna Davitaya, Georgia's State Minister for Diaspora, said: "We are looking for investors in our agricultural sphere, because Georgia historically always used to be an agricultural country but in Soviet times we lost these traditions."

Georgia Minister for Diaspora Affairs invites all SA white farmers -– 41,000 families -- to become Georgian Citizen Farmers

Exodus of thousands of white South African farmers could be near.

Council of Conservative Citizens
Tuesday, October 26th, 2010

White farmers in South Africa are the most target populations for racially motivated violence in the world. 3,000 farmers and their family members have been murdered by blacks.

The ANC has been seizing their land to give away to it’s black supporters. Farmland already confiscated now lies in ruins. New black farmers produce little, if anything, of the confiscated lands. Now the ANC is working on plans to seize another 30% of white owned farmland.

Facing violent genocide, and state sponsored persecution, plans for a mass exodus to the Republic of Georgia are in the works.

White farmers were driven out of several other African nations, which confiscated their lands. Each time, economic collapse and starvation followed. In Zimbabwe, a few thousand white farmers fed the entire nation with enough left over for exporting. The were forcibly expelled. Today the farms lie in ruins, with all of the modern machinery rusting away. Zimbabwe is in a perpetual state of mass starvation and relies on foreign aid and charity from white nations to survive.

SA Farm Attacks [www.sa-farm-attacks.co.nr]

‘Zimbabwe style farm invasions may be delayed ... but will definitely happen in SA's future’
-- Lt. Gen. Mojo Matau, Former Chief of Mil. Intel., SANDF

... Then I asked my friend [Lt. Gen. Mojo Matau], 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.’

.... 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:

UK Immig. Judge refers to Zimbabwe Farm Invasions as 'racially motivated' Genocide..

Woman who took part in violent attacks on white farmers in Zimbabwe denied UK asylum

By David Gardner, Daily Mail.UK
Last updated at 7:52 PM on 16th September 2010

Land invasions: A woman who applied for UK asylum admitted she had been involved with gangs who scared white farmers off their properties in Zimbabwe (file photo)

A woman who admitted taking part in savage evictions of white farmers from their homes in Zimbabwe lost her bid for asylum after a High Court judge accused her of ‘crimes against humanity.’

Mr Justice Ouseley threw out the widowed mother-of-two’s appeal to remain in the UK after she confessed to beating up ten people during two land invasions.

The judge said the state-sponsored mob violence, which saw white famers’ land seized and shared out among President Robert Mugabe’s cronies, was akin to genocide.

‘We are satisfied that the two farm invasions were crimes against humanity,’ he said, likening the 39-year-old woman’s role to a concentration camp guard who followed Nazi orders during the Holocaust.

The woman, who cannot be named, came to Britain illegally in 2002 and did not claim asylum until six years later.

Loyal: The woman, who cannot be identified, said her actions were in support of President Robert Mugabe

Her bid for refugee status was rejected on the grounds that her own violent actions in Zimbabwe disqualified her from humanitarian protection in this country.

She admitted to being part of a gang of thugs from Mugabe’s Zanu-PF party who invaded two white-owned farms intent on causing maximum terror and driving away black workers.

The woman, referred to only as ‘SK”, agreed she had beaten up to ten people whilst their homes burned, ‘inflicting enough pain to get them to run away.’

She said that on one occasion, she beat a woman so badly she thought she would die.

However, she insisted she had taken part in the raids under duress to prove her loyalty to Mugabe’s regime and she had never intended to kill anyone.

Mr Justice Ouseley, sitting at the Upper Tribunal Immigration and Asylum Chamber said the farm invasions were ‘part of widespread, systematic attacks’ against white farmers and their black workers, carried out with the full knowledge of the regime ‘as a deliberate act of policy’.

The intention behind the ‘obviously inhumane’ invasions ‘was to cause great suffering or inflict serious physical or mental injury’ on victims and cow them into never returning to their homes or opposing the Mugabe regime, he added.

'We're going to take the land & determine the price' - Malema Report to ANCYL National General Council

For, months prior to the 2010 World Cup, this blog recommended a “No Normal Sport in TRC Hypocrisy on Steroids ZA” Boycott of the World Cup, for among other reasons: ‘Zimbabwe style farm invasions may be delayed ... but will definitely happen in SA's future’ - Lt. Gen. Mojo Matau, Former Chief of Mil. Intel., SANDF, but the majority of South Africans -- black and white -- love sport more than honest and honourable goverment, and so the result is their corrupt goverment allows them to watch and play as much sport as they wish, to keep them distracted from how the 'National Democratic Revolution' plans and dealings for the Zimbabwefication of South Africa are being implemented step by step...

‘We’ll take the land and give you nothing’

2010-08-27 11:34
City Press

Landowners who refuse amounts offered during expropriation should have their land taken away with no payment, ANC Youth League president Julius Malema has said.

“Willing seller, willing buyer is not working, (black economic empowerment) is not working,” Malema told the Mail & Guardian when asked what the league meant when it said it did not want leaders to tell the queen (of England) that economic policies would not change.

Malema said that in 10 years, a certain percentage of land should have been transferred to the majority of the population.

“It’s a simple policy. We’re going to take the land, but we’ll compensate and we’ll determine the price. We go to (Eugene) Terre’Blanche’s farm and say: for these many hectares we will give you R2 million, thank you very much.

“If you say that’s too little and you don’t want it, then we take the land and give you nothing. It’s called expropriation with compensation determined by the State.”

Without mentioning President Jacob Zuma, who travelled to the United Kingdom earlier this year and met Queen Elizabeth II, he said that when the ANCYL was formed, it was opposed to forms of struggle such as petitions, or “sending delegations to the queen”.

“Now that you are given power by the people of South Africa, you still go to the queen and behave like you don’t have power from the people.

“When you say that there will be no change in South Africa’s economic pattern, you are saying that it will remain the same as during the colonial regime.”

Farmers at War in Zimbabwe: South African Farmers Under Attack in Zimbabwe

Family appeals to SA govt over land attacks

Written by SW Radio, UK Zimbawean
Friday, 06 August 2010 12:46

Farmer at War, by Trevor Grundy & Bernard Miller [Rhodesia Min of Info] (PDF) [The Farmer at War was published in Rhodesia in 1979 while the Lancaster House talks were in process. It describes the embattled position of the farmers in 1979 and, even more relevant today, concludes that without the farms and farmers there was no future for the country. Includes photos and a Roll of Honour of Farmers and their families killed up to 1979.]

A South African family farming in Zimbabwe has made a desperate appeal to President Jacob Zuma’s government to come to their aid in their bid to fend of attempts by a senior politician to grab their farm.

Philip and Ellen Hapelt from Grasslands Farm in Somabhula have been fighting for several months to hold on to their property, which has caught the eye of parliamentarian Jabulani Mangena.

Mangena has led a campaign of harassment, vandalism and violence against the Hapelts and their workers, claiming he has an offer letter entitling him to the property. Late last year, the Hapelts were brutally beaten by a gang of thugs, in an attack the family believes was meant to drive them from their farm.

The Hapelts many years ago voluntarily gave up the majority of their land for the sake of ‘reform’, under an agreement that would allow them to remain on their homestead with a small portion of farming land. They also have two Court orders that entitle them to live on the farm without fear of invasion or persecution. But Mangena is openly disregarding the courts and has even threatened the Hapelts with more violence if they approach the courts again.

Agri-SA withdraws from Gov. Populist Resolutions

Farmers in clash with government

Aziz Hartley, The Mercury
August 02 2010 at 07:27AM

From Rhodesia's Kings Feast Breadbasket... to Zimbabwe's Bitter Harvest Basketcase

Farmers are heading for a showdown with the government following heated arguments at a weekend summit on farm labour in Somerset West.

Agri-SA, a national body representing commercial farmers, quit a two-day government summit on farm workers at the weekend in protest against a list of "radical" resolutions which they termed as a "kick in the teeth" to the farming industry.

The adopted resolutions included a moratorium on farm evictions, provision of basic services, compliance with basic conditions of employment, a minimum wage and regulation of labour brokers. Agri-SA's participation is crucial to implementation of the declaration.

But Agri-SA dropped a bombshell when they stormed out the summit, calling the declaration a set of "pre-determined radical political views".

Things were going well on Friday when Agri-SA president Jan Moller, President Jacob Zuma, Cosatu secretary-general Zwelinzima Vavi and Premier Helen Zille all told about 1 100 summit delegates about the need to improve conditions on farms.

During their testimonies, three workers spoke of their terrible working conditions, abuse at the hands of their employers and years of work without benefits.

But on Saturday, as the programme director read out the resolutions from the commissions, Moller took to the podium and announced Agri-SA's withdrawal from proceedings.

"We cannot support the resolutions. It ignores the good relations between employers and employees. We've decided as Agri-SA that we will participate in other initiatives between ourselves and relative departments as well as government, but we've decided to terminate our (summit) participation with immediate effect," said Moller, who later called the declaration "populist".

He was loudly jeered and booed from the floor.

ANC planning Zimbabwe style land invasions after 2010 World Cup

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.

‘Hunting Season on SA's Farmers Not Yet Finished’ - UK Media

White farmers 'being wiped out'

Over 3,000 have been killed since 1994. Now the ANC is accused of fanning the hate.

March 28, 2010
Dan McDougall in Ceres, Western Cape, Sunday Times.UK

A man walks through a field of crosses erected near Pretoria, South Africa, to honour mostly white farmers who have died in farm attacks over past decade. [Photo: Sunday Times]

THE gunmen walked silently through the orchard. Skirting a row of burnt-out tyres, set ablaze months earlier to keep the budding fruit from freezing, they drew their old .38 revolvers.

Inside his farmhouse Pieter Cillier, 57, slept with his 14-year-old daughter Nikki at his side. His 12-year-old son JD was having a sleepover with two teenagers in an adjoining room.

As the intruders broke in, the farmer woke. He rushed to stop them, only to be shot twice in the chest.

In his death throes he would have seen his killers and then his children standing over him, screaming and crying.

The attackers, who were drug addicts, simply disappeared into the night. Cillier’s murder, at Christmas, was barely reported in the local press. It was, after all, everyday news.

Death has stalked South Africa’s white farmers for years. The number murdered since the end of apartheid in 1994 has passed 3,000.

ANC/Gov. to Nationalize all Agricultural Land: Declare it as National Asset; Farmers will lose Ownership Rights..

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.

Two weeks ago when Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform Gugile Nkwinti addressed Agri SA's industry conference in Somerset West, he broadly discussed the department's strategic plan but failed to mention anything about changes in land ownership.

Are White Africans Naïve utopian idealists?: Exporting Farmers -- From the South African Frying Pan Into the African Fire...

Climate change, energy depletion, food shortages, resource wars, species extinction - these are not the problem, they are only the symptoms. The singular root problem that causes all these horrifying threats to mankind is overpopulation.... The Population Elephant: The Problems with “The Problem”

Consider the following two articles on Farming in Africa, included below: (i) Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU SA)'s report Exporting Farmers -- From the Frying Pan into the Fire; and (ii) Is it a Trap? South African Farmers in High Demand Across Africa!

Add to that the Daily Mail's Special Investigation: The secret race war in South Africa that threatens to overshadow the World Cup.

Then consider the principles and advice in The Dark Side of Optimism; or the Bright Side of Bias. Are you also perhaps

reminded of Mike Smith’s allegations that South Africans suffered from ‘Buyers Remorse’ (How Good are Good Intentions?) and “Paradigm Paralysis” (Shifting the Paradigm of Multiculturalism); like naïve utopian idealists, we purchased the ‘Truth and Reconciliation’ Multicultural Rainbow Illusion; and slowly we are waking up to the Snake Oil Salesmen’s lies, and our own complicity in our blinkered refusal to confront reality. How complicit are we in allowing our thinking, to be misused, by remaining subservient to destructive beliefs? Why, and how, do we allow politicians, priests, professors and journalists, to tell us what to think?

Transcript: Christiane Amanpour interviews Robert Mugabe

Christian Amanpour & Robert Mugabe: Reconciliation Zimbabwe Style

AMANPOUR: So do you consider white Zimbabweans to be Zimbabweans?

MUGABE: Those who are naturalized and have citizenship, yes.

AMANPOUR: Those who've been living there for years and years and years?

MUGABE: But historically...

AMANPOUR: Right.

MUGABE: ... historically, they have a debt.

AMANPOUR: The people who -- contributing to farming -- historically they have a debt to pay?

MUGABE: Yes, yes, their land. They -- they occupied the land illegally. They seized the land from our people.

AMANPOUR: Look...

MUGABE: And therefore, the process of reform, land reform, involved their handing -- having to hand over the land. We agreed upon this with the British, by the way.

AMANPOUR: Some 80 percent of that land was acquired after you took office, some of the farmland, and with the very certificates that mean government approval. Why are these people being hounded out of the country? Why are they being...

MUGABE: They are not -- they are not being hounded.

AMANPOUR: ... hounded off their land, then?

MUGABE: No, no, no, they're not being hounded out of the country at all.

AMANPOUR: We've just done reports about it.

MUGABE: Those who are in industry and manufacturing and mining are not being...

AMANPOUR: The farmers I'm talking about. Why is that...

MUGABE: ... are not being affected.

AMANPOUR: ... wonderful farmland and why are they being...

MUGABE: What are you talking about? We are getting land from them, and that's all. They're not being hounded out of the country, not at all.

AMANPOUR: They're being hounded off their land.

MUGABE: (inaudible) their land.

AMANPOUR: It's not theirs?

MUGABE: Our -- our land.

AMANPOUR: Even though they bought it, even though they bought it with the certificates of approval from the government?

MUGABE: But haven't you heard of the Lancaster House discussions and the agreement with the British government? Because they are British settlers; originally they have been British settlers. And we agreed at Lancaster House that there would be land reform.

AMANPOUR: But they're citizens. But they're citizens, aren't they? And isn't this farming disaster contributing to your...

MUGABE: Citizens by colonization, seizing land from the original people, indigenous people of the country.

AMANPOUR: But how did that all go so wrong?

MUGABE: You approve of that?

AMANPOUR: How did that all go so wrong? Because when you came in, you -- it was -- it was about reconciliation.

MUGABE: They knew about it. They knew we had this program of land acquisition and land reform. They knew about it.

AMANPOUR: But what about the blacks, then?

MUGABE: And the British knew about it.