One of the biggest liberal myths in South Africa is that whites own 87% of the land. If you consider that 70% of the country consists of the Karoo desert, there is only 30% with any rainfall to speak of. Blacks have always owned at least half of that in the form of tribal lands where mostly subsistence farming is practised with land being administered according to the whims of the chief. You have his permission to plant or let your cattle graze, but it could be revoked anytime.
The government also owns huge tracts of land. Instead of developing that land, as well as the tribal lands, the government wants to punish white farmers for being successful! As many analysts and economists have pointed out, they are actually using taxpayers’ funds to take land out of production and turn it into subsistence land as in the tribal areas. That is why our agricultural production has been declining, with food prices going up all the time.
The worst is: South African blacks are just not interested in agriculture. Most of them would prefer to have a city job, earn a big salary and spend it on branded consumer goods. But government sees the large number of white-owned farms as a political and strategic problem. It prevents them from pushing whites around at will and even expelling them if need be, as in Zimbabwe.
Another burning issue around land reform is that we have some foreign academics, real “tenured radicals” who have got posts at our universities – heaven knows how – and are now pushing a radical socialist agenda when it comes to land ownership. One such person is Dr. Ruth Hall of a group called PLAAS (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies).
More than 4 000 white farmers and their family members have been killed, with many tortured to death in dehumanising, atrocious ways. They are made to drink boiling water, burned with hot irons or simply hacked to pieces with their corpses displayed afterwards in ways that remind one of Satanic rituals.
Personally, I think the vicious attacks on Afrikaner farmers stem from three things: recent history, African culture and radical left-wing ideology.
During the ANC’s terror campaign in the 1980s, they not only placed bombs in diners and supermarkets, but they also buried limpet mines on farm roads, blowing up white families, as well as black farm workers. So this culture of terrorist violence has taken root and still continues by other means.
A game farm in South Africa
The second factor is not politically correct to mention, but it needs to be said that in traditional African culture there is a fascination with the power of horror and violence. A few hundred people are still murdered every year for body parts to be used in so-called muti or “medicine”. So mix terrorism with horror and you are on your way to unstoppable violence.
The third ingredient is left-wing ideology or what Americans call “liberalism” which amounts to the same thing. There is a whole industry in South Africa, but mostly funded from abroad by Scandinavian governments and American liberal foundations, which advocates radical land reform and Soviet-style collectivist agriculture in our country. To them private property means next to nothing and they indirectly encourage some of these Einsatzgruppen to just go out and kill white farmers indiscriminately. They are dreaming of a brave new world without family-owned or privately-held farms and the murders suit them.
Land reform and the propaganda around it are fuelling ethnic conflict in South Africa which few outsiders are prepared to acknowledge, except the organisation Genocide Watch which looks at it more analytically in terms of other identity conflicts world-wide.
There definitely is a risk of full-scale genocide in South Africa, although for the moment the organisation for that is largely lacking. At present it is more of a random process, driven by the three factors mentioned above.
It is also important to understand that whites and blacks do not naturally hate each other. The current conflict is being driven by outsiders – Europeans, Americans and perhaps even Mugabe who has accused Mandela of being “soft on whites” – who will gain through a collapse of South African agriculture. They will be able to buy land, machinery and other agricultural assets on the cheap and so extend the neo-colonial hold that they have on our country already.
“Nearly twenty years after the 1994 government change, the land debate is still one of the most emotional debates in South Africa,” Dr. Pieter Mulder, leader of the Freedom Front Plus and deputy minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries says.
Dr. Mulder addressed the Ad Hoc Group for the Protection of Property Rights’ conference about the Big Lie about Land Ownership in Muldersdrift and spoke in particular about commercial farming.
He said that land is the topic of heavy debates in South Africa every day. His experience is however that the majority of these debates are based on distorted myths about land.
“In the process, every participant has a couple of truths which are distorted and adapted to suite each one’s perspective. The only way to get to real answers in these debates is to carry out the debates with facts and not with emotions and propaganda” Dr. Mulder says.
The following facts should be taken into account when this issue is to be debated sensibly:
Increased government protection for the South African commercial agriculture and the more productive use of land is needed to prevent future famine in South Africa. This makes food security an important negotiating instrument against government in the hands of commercial farmers;
To be able to farm sustainably, various perceptions about land has to change. One of the most important ones, is that land automatically brings wealth;
The demands for the nationalisation of land and/or the unilateral expropriation of land should be combated in an organised manner with facts about the economy and famine implications;
The uncertainty about the important role that agriculture plays in South Africa should be cleared away as quickly as possible. Unambiguous government comments and decisions are needed for this. It could prevent agriculture from collapsing and too much expertise leaving the country;
South Africa consists of 122 million hectares of land. The land which could be used for really intensive agricultural crop cultivation, is however very limited. Only approximately 13% of South Africa’s total land is regarded as being high quality agricultural land;
Mining plays an important role in the economy of South Africa. But it has already resulted in an area equal in size to the National Kruger Park permanently being lost for the production of food and transport as a result of mining activities and urbanisation. Because land is not a renewable resource, it is extremely important that high quality agricultural land is protected against mining and other activities. For this, new measures and better coordination between different state departments are needed;
With a projected 70% of all South Africans being urbanised within the next decade, it will place extremely high pressure on the shrinking number of commercial farmers and on the de-populated rural areas to produce enough food for the growing population;
As the population and in the world and in South Africa increases, more food will have to be produced with less land. With new technology and research and the sharing of knowledge through training, it is possible and the current ceilings which exists on the production of food, can be broken. The requirement is however that it is done without polluting the environment any further with carbon dioxide or depleting the water resources of the earth;
A significant portion of South Africa’s population still does not enjoy food security. This hunger and malnutrition in South Africa has not been caused by a shortage of food as is the case in other countries. It has been caused by the poverty of certain members of our society who cannot afford the current food prices.
“It is still going very well with many South African farmers. Yet, rising debt figures, smaller profits and the declining number of farmers all show that the red lights are starting to flicker,” Dr. Mulder says.
The land claims process closed 14 years ago will be reopened.
The Star newspaper reported that according to the draft Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Bill published last week the new deadline for claims would be December 31, 2018.
The previous deadline was December 31, 1998.
If the bill became law, it would allow those who missed the first deadline to claim, opening the door to new claims for those dispossessed by homelands betterment schemes, including white people, The Star reported.
It would also allow people to lodge claims that were previously refused.
The land claims process was for those who were dispossessed of a land right after June 13, 1913 as a result of past racially discriminatory laws.
An explanatory memo attached to the draft bill said the previous restitution programme had “a number of problems” and certain categories of people who lost their rights due to colonial and apartheid laws had not been included.
These were people who could not lodge claims before the December 1998 deadline, and those who were dispossessed before 1913.
Others were dispossesses through betterment planning schemes but were not allowed to lodge claims. – SAPA
'Fast-track land reform' of the Zimbabwean style, as sought by Max du Preez
by TAU Bulletin
Anti-apartheid journalist and apologist for South Africa’s democratic dispensation Max du Preez has been caught short with his latest efforts to justify the unjustifiable. In a Natal Mercury piece (30.4.13), Du Preez tells us we can “learn from Zimbabwe’s flourishing farms”, and goes on to laud a new book by three London (where else?) left wingers: London School of Economics’ Joseph Hanlon, an anti-apartheid and commonwealth sanctions activist in the 1980’s; Jeanette Manjengwa, Deputy Director, Institute for Environmental Studies, University of Zimbabwe; and Teresa Smart, visiting fellow at the University of London.
Du Preez says the book “Zimbabwe Takes Back its Land” shows that Zimbabwe’s radical land grab “has worked” and that “agricultural production is on levels comparable to the time before the process started.” What is meaningful, says Du Preez, is that these production levels were achieved by 245,000 black farmers on land previously worked by some 6 000 white farmers. He clearly does not see the irony in this – does it take 245 000 Africans to produce the same as 6 000 white farmers?
(It is interesting that euphemisms such as “the process”, “land redistribution” and “fast track land reform” are used in the book and by Mr. Du Preez to describe one of Africa’s most haunting and terrifying attacks on any country’s productive agricultural sector. Who can forget the horrifying television footage of mobs of so-called war veterans storming white farms, destroying farm animals, beating to death family dogs trying to defend their owners’ properties, while farm families who couldn’t flee fast enough met sometimes gruesome fates at the hands of these thugs, all in the name of land reform. Ironically, these destructive mobs received few farms at all – the choicer properties were taken by Mugabe’s cronies for, in some cases, weekend parties.)
From the book, Du Preez says lessons South Africans can learn is that new black farmers can actually farm successfully and commercially if given enough time and help, and that an “ambitious land redistribution programme (in South Africa) can play a role in alleviating poverty and providing employment and dignity to large numbers or marginalized people”. (It is reported that the London team spent one month in Zimbabwe before writing the book, and that they used a simplistic method based on a very small section of agriculture – they used three farms that were “taken back” while more than five thousand farms were stolen by the Mugabe government.)
It is further common cause that many “flourishing” farms are owned by the Chinese, and that the few still owned by white farmers operate at the grace and favor of President Mugabe.(He, his courtiers and his army have to be fed after all!). We are also told that when certain farms are targeted by the ubiquitous war veterans, all the owner has to do is phone the Chinese Embassy and nothing more is heard from the mob. Sizeable tobacco contracts have been signed with the Chinese government.
What is to be gleaned from this puff piece by someone who clearly feels the need to continue defending South Africa’s current dispensation?
Millennia
Black South Africans have existed in Africa for millennia. They never developed anything better than subsistence farming –maybe food for today but little for tomorrow. They had no written language, and it was left to early Christian missionaries to formalize and put into script African languages which had been solely an oral tradition. Thus there was no recorded title to land – it is a non-African concept – so to entitle a book “Zimbabwe Takes its Land Back” is disingenuous. One commentator declared: Zimbabwe takes back its land from whom? It was taken back from Zimbabweans, seventy percent of whom had bought their farms after President Mugabe came to power and whose agricultural skills were the bedrock of a country that had been a savannah until they came.
Yes, in another way, land in Zimbabwe was “taken back” – it was plundered and stolen from white productive farmers whose accomplishments showed up the incompetence and inability of others to produce a surplus, let alone enough to eat for themselves. This highway robbery was based on racial resentment, fuelled by a tyrant afraid of losing an election and who used white achievement as a scapegoat to foster black pique.
The United Nations
Before Mr. Du Preez decided to wax unctuous about Zimbabwe’s “flourishing farms”, he could have visited the websites of the United Nations World Food Programme (WFP), the Food and Agricultural Organization (FAO) in Rome, the World Bank and a few other organizations trying to keep Zimbabwe afloat. According to WFP director Felix Bamezon (14.3.13), Zimbabwe’s current food insecurity levels are “the worst in four years.” The WFP is presently providing food aid to 1,58 million people in 37 districts of the country. In March this year, the WFP said approximately 19% of the population of Zimbabwe was estimated to be in need of food assistance.
If a government cannot even feed its people, let alone have surplus production, this can hardly be termed “flourishing”. The Japanese government recently provided nearly $6 million for flood, drought and food relief to Zimbabwe. This contribution allowed the WFP to purchase maize for 215,000 people and pulses for 835 000 people for two months. During the last decade, Japanhas provided more than $29 million to the WFP’s operations in Zimbabwe.
In January of this year, the Zimbabwean finance minister admitted to journalists the country only had $217 in its bank account! David Smith of the London Guardian wrote on 30 January of this year that “from 2000 the seizure of white-owned farms led to chaos in the agriculture sector and the economy shrank by half. In 2008 hyperinflation of 231,000,000% broke the national currency and left millions of people hungry.” (Emphasis ours)
Where did the money go? The opposition Movement for Democratic Change (MDC) says that income from diamond sales is being stolen by President Mugabe’s Zanu/PF party to finance the forthcoming election. The watchdog “Partnership Africa Canada” said last November that at least $2 billion of diamonds form the Marange fields has been stolen by Mugabe’s ruling elite.
What flourishing really means!
In the October 2009 edition of THE ROSARIAN, a publication distributed by the Flame Lily Foundation (created to secure the interests of former residents of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe), Dr. Mick Gammon writes a lengthy piece on the destruction of Zimbabwe under President Robert Mugabe, with particular emphasis on agriculture. (Dr. D.M. Gammon was a former specialist in the Department of Conservation and Extension in the Rhodesian Ministry of Agriculture.)
“The first white traders and missionaries who came to the region in the 19th century found a land devoid of infrastructure. The wheel was not yet in use. Travelers went for days without seeing any human habitation. With a population of around 250 00 at the time, 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, no electricity or telephones, no fences, boreholes, pumps, windmills, dams, irrigation schemes; no cattle dips, barns or any other farm buildings.
“These first farmers had to discover how to contend with predators that killed their livestock and other animals that consumed their crops; how to control diseases, pests and parasites of livestock and crops that were foreign to them. Knowledge and experience built up over generations in the developed world had limited application, since the local climate, oil and vegetation was vastly different.
“From this starting point, agriculture developed faster than it had anywhere else in the world. Soon the country became self-sufficient in most agricultural products. In many cases yields per hectare and quality equalled and bettered those in the developed world.
“The United Nations Food and Agriculture Year Book 1975 ranked the then Rhodesia second in the world in terms of yields of maize, wheat, soya beans and ground nuts, and third for cotton. In the combined ranking for all these crops, Rhodesia ranked first in the world.
Rhodesia’s Virginia tobacco was rated the best in the world in yield and quality, while maize entries in world championships were consistently placed in the first three places.
“The world’s largest single citrus producer was developed early in the country’s history. The indigenous cattle were developed through breeding and selection to highly productive breeds. Wild life was incorporated into farming systems to develop a highly successful eco-tourism industry, and endangered species found their most secure havens on farm conservancies.
“Zimbabwe was the world’s second largest exporter of flue-cured tobacco. This together with exports of maize, soya beans, cotton, sugar, coffee, tea, fruit, vegetables, flowers and beef, made agriculture the major source of foreign currency. It was the largest employer of labor, providing employment for about a third of the country’s work force.
“The country’s state departments of veterinary services, tobacco research, plant and seed research, livestock and crop management were world class. Each farm was, to a large extent, an outpost of civilization and many farms established schools for the children of their workers. Every farm was a clinic and dispensary and ambulance service for the surrounding areas.”
What happened to these farmers has been splashed around the world. It is a tragic history. From prosperity to a government balance sheet of just $217; to perennial food aid, to a tyrannical dictatorship, corruption and government theft; to poverty and large-scale emigration. From a bread basket to a basket case. The only thing flourishing in this scenario is the scary imagination of Mr. Du Preez.
Writing on his Facebook page, Zimbabwean opposition politician Roy Bennett has refuted Max du Preez’s recent defence of Robert Mugabe’s so-called “land reform programme” whereby white-owned land was confiscated, plunging the country into economic chaos.
According to Bennett:
“There is a new fashion developing among some white journalists and academics: they have joined with Zanu-PF in presenting ‘land reform’ as a success. It began with English academic, Ian Scoones, and it’s now being repeated by others – the latest version being a book entitled ‘Zimbabwe takes back its land’.
“These people are reacting to what they say is the simplistic picture of ‘land reform’ as a disaster. But their revisionist line strikes me as being more than a little simplistic itself. These studies focus on very small samples and then make sweeping generalisations that cast Zanu-PF and ‘land reform’ in a positive light. In turn, journalists pick up on these generalisations and simplify them yet again, coming out with sound bites that are grossly and blatantly inaccurate.
“Knowingly or unknowingly, these people have become victims of Zanu-PF propaganda. The well-known South African journalist, Max du Preez, is one. A couple of days ago he wrote in We can learn from Zim’s flourishing farms that ‘agricultural production is presently on levels comparable with the time before the [land reforms] started.’ Even the Zimbabwe government’s own statistics show this to be an absurd statement.
“Tobacco production, the greatest ‘success’ story since the land invasions, currently stands at around 145 million kilograms, between 50 and 100 million kilograms short of the figures from 1995-2000. (Ironically, it is also true that after a dismal few years during which Gono and others claimed to be trying to stimulate production, the rebound in tobacco has occurred via the involvement of crooked Western companies that are providing inputs to peasant farmers and to many white farm managers who are working on behalf of chiefs.)
“In the twenty years from 1980, there were three years of national food deficit coinciding with drought in the early 1980s and early 1990s. Since 2000, there have been 13 consecutive years of food deficit and the United Nations has recently appealed for more than $100 million dollars to feed 1.7 million Zimbabweans in 2013. Zimbabweans are again dependent for survival on the generosity of the international community, including the so-called ‘regime change’ neo-imperialist power, Britain.”
Max du Preez writes in his latest column that “Zimbabwe’s radical land redistribution has worked and agricultural production is on levels comparable to the time before the process started.”
Echoing the anti-white, anti-Afrikaner ideology being churned out by the radical NGO, PLAAS in Cape Town, Max du Preez states that “the two lessons from Zimbabwe” are:
“The first is that most new black farmers can actually farm successfully and commercially if given enough time and help. There are far too many South Africans who believe the opposite.
“The second is that an ambitious land redistribution programme can play a large role in alleviating poverty and providing employment and dignity to large numbers of marginalised people.”
The cultural-Marxist journalist and renegade Afrikaner therefore calls for a radical Zimbabwe-style land grab in South Africa, stating:
“We urgently need to throw old, conventional thinking overboard and tackle our problem with more vigour.”
A witch doctor from Lesotho was busy cooking body parts of a white farmer when he was arrested, the Free State High Court heard this week.
The trial of Moeketsi Hopolong Mokoena (34) on Monday before Judge A. Kruger was postponed until April 22, the Beeld reported.
According to the charge sheet, he was busy cooking parts of Jan van Wyk (82) of the farm Jakkalsfontein.
The black man allegedly killed Basie Venter (65) of the farm Biesiesvlei in the evening of March 30, 2009. His wife witnessed the murder outside their home.
The state argues that Mary Venter saw how Mokoena killed her husband with an iron pipe. Mokoena then fled, presumably to Van Wyk’s farm. It is about 5 km away.
The state said when security officers arrived at Van Wyk’s farm, they found Mokoena, bloodied, seated on the front porch of the homestead.
Van Wyk’s badly mutilated body was found in the living room. He died as a result of a deep wound to the neck.
His body parts were found in a pan where Mokoena was busy cooking them.
Lesotho is often called a British Bantustan. Prince Seeiso of the royal house of Lesotho, is also high commissioner to the Court of St James in Britain.
The extent to which the British exerted direct control over Basutoland waxed and waned until Basutoland’s independence in 1966, when it became the Kingdom of Lesotho, but Britain has remained a strong influence.
A third of the population goes hungry. It has one of the highest rates of HIV/Aids in the world and life expectancy now is only 41 with some sources claiming it is as low as 34. It is so poor that it is sometimes classified as Fourth World.
Yet the mountainous African kingdom of Lesotho is the place where the British Royal, Prince Harry says he can truly be himself. He runs a charity in the country and regulary visists the place.
Lungisa, second from left, next to fallen hero Malema
The president of the Pan-African Youth Union, Andile Lungisa, believes President Robert Mugabe’s land reform policy in Zimbabwe should serve as a blueprint for South Africa.
Lungisa was among those who attended Mugabe’s $600000 birthday bash in the small mining town of Bindura.
Lungisa wasthe former deputy president of the ANC Youth League.
Taking to the podium to address the 50000-strong crowd, Lungisa said: “We are saying in South Africa and the whole of Africa, we should emulate Zimbabwe.”
Lungisa was invited by Zanu-PF’s youth wing alongside other youth leaders from regional liberation front movements.
Under Mugabe’s land reform policy, roughly 4000 white farmers had their land seized without compensation . At present, there are less than 300 white commercial farmers still operating, but their land remains targeted.
Farmers who resist eviction face at least two years’ imprisonment.
It is widely believed that Mugabe’s land reform policy resulted in his nation’s economic ruin, and severe lack of food security. “We are saying in South Africa and the whole of Africa, we should emulate Zimbabwe,” Lungisa added.
Pedzisai Ruhanya, the former news editor of the banned Zimbabwean independent newspaper Daily News, said Lungisa’s comments amounted to mere politicking in a bid to impress Mugabe.
“The ANC exists in a very active community not as passive as Zimbabwe. So to take the same position as Zanu-PF is impossible in South Africa.”
A few days before the birthday bash, the 12-year-old son of a member of one of the two MDC factions was killed in an arson attack.
Some have alleged that one of Mugabe’s close allies was responsible for the attack.
“Even when [someone] gets killed by a cow; they blame it on Zanu-PF,” Mugabe said. – timeslive.co.za
President Jacob Zuma proposed a new land reform plan in Pretoria on Monday evening.
“This is an innovative proposal that needs to be tested,” he told the first annual general meeting of the African Farmers’ Association of SA (Afasa).
The plan proposed a district-based approach to land reform and its financing.
“It proposes that each district should establish a district land reform committee where all stakeholders are involved,” Zuma said.
“This committee will be responsible for identifying 20% of the commercial agricultural land in the district and giving commercial farmers the option of assisting its transfer to black farmers.”
Implementation of this land reform proposal would include five steps.
Firstly, it would entail identifying land readily available from land already in the market; land where the farmer was under severe financial pressure; land held by an absentee landlord willing to exit; and land in a deceased estate.
“In this way, land can be found without distorting markets.”
Secondly, the state would buy the land at 50% of its market value. This, Zuma said, would be closer to its fair productive value.
The current owner’s shortfall would be made up by cash or in-kind contributions from the commercial farmers in the district who volunteered to participate.
Thirdly, in exchange, commercial farmers would be protected from losing their land and gain black economic empowerment status.
“This should remove the uncertainty and mistrust that surrounds land reform and the related loss of investor confidence.
Fourthly, a stepped-up programme of financing should also be created, Zuma said. This would involve the Treasury, the Land Bank, and established white farmers.
“The model envisages that the cost of land reform be spread between all stakeholders.
“It also envisages new financial instruments being designed for the purpose of facilitating land reform.” These could include 40-year mortgages at preferential rates for new entrants into the markets, as well as land bonds that white farmers and others could invest in.
The fifth step was increasing investment in agricultural research and development.
“We also need to use the investment more strategically.”
Zuma said the government looked forward to ongoing engagement with Afasa.
“So that we can develop and harness our vision for agriculture and food security together.” – Sapa
Two million kilometers of foreign purchased land in developing countries is either idle or used for Western biofuel production, according to a British charity. Oxfam’s report estimates an area the size of London is sold every six days.
The report states that between 2000 and 2010, 60% of investment in agricultural land by foreign traders occurred in developing countries with hunger problems.
Yet two thirds of those investors plan to export everything they produce. While 60% of deals are to produce crops that can be used for biofuels. Land can also be left idle, as speculators wait for its value to increase.
Oxfam estimates that this land could have fed 1 billion people.
According to the International Land Coalition, an NGO based in Italy, 106 million hectares of land in developing countries has been acquired by foreign investors in a period between 2000-2010, with some disastrous results.
30% of all land in Liberia has been handed out in large scale concessions in the last 5 years, while up to 63% of all available land in Cambodia has been passed on to private companies.
Farmers forced out
Oxfam emphasizes that much of the land sold off was already being used for small scale and subsistence farming or other types of natural resource use.
The report dismissed claims by the World Bank that most of the sold land remains idle, waiting to be developed. In fact most agricultural land deals target quality farm land, particularly land that is irrigated and offers good access to markets.
A 2010 study by the Independent Evaluation Group (IEG) – the official monitoring and evaluation body of the World Bank – supported Oxfam’s findings.
It found that 30% of World Bank projects involved involuntary resettlement. The study estimated that 1 million people are involuntarily resettled in projects financed by the World Bank.
In some cases people were violently evicted from their land without consultation or compensation.
Barbara Stocking, Oxfam’s chief executive, told British newspaper the Guardian that, “The rush for land is out of control and some of the world’s poorest people are suffering hunger, violence and greater poverty as a result. The World Bank is in a unique position to help stop land grabs becoming one of the biggest scandals of the century.”
Oxfam has urged the World Bank to freeze its investments in large scale land acquisitions in poor nations.
In the last decade the World Bank has tripled its support for land projects to $6-$8 billion a year, but it does not provide data on how much of this goes to land acquisition or any connection between lending and conflict in a country.
Oxfam wants the World Bank to make sure that information about land deals is publicly accessible, that communities are informed in advance and have the right to agree to or refuse to participate in projects.
Stocking said that the UK, as one of the banks largest shareholders and next year’s president of the G8, should try and get these land deals frozen.
“The UK should also show leadership in reversing flawed biofuels targets, which are a main driver for land and are diverting food into fuel. It can also play a crucial role as president of the G8 next year by putting food and hunger at the heart of the agenda,” Stocking said.
But in a statement released to the Guardian, the international Finance Corporation (IFC), the World Bank’s private lending arm, defended its past transactions.
“IFC does not finance land acquisitions for speculative purposes. We invest in productive agricultural and forestry enterprises that can be land intensive to help provide the food and fiber the world needs.”
Dutch farmers want Zimbabwe to pay them compensation. White farmers were forced off their land during from 2000 to 2002 when the land grabbing started in all earnest.
Radio Netherlands reported on Wednesday that the farmers took their case to the International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), a Washington-based court which operates under the aegis of the World Bank.
Earlier this year, Zimbabwe finance minister Tendai Biti promised payment but has not held his promise, despite a letter from the Dutch foreign minister in August asking him to honour his word.
The ICSID already ruled in favour of the Dutch in 2009 and ordered Zimbabwe to pay up €8.8m in compensation, to be increased by 10% for each year since the illegal anti-white “reforms”.
According to the report, the group is now entitled to a sum of more than €23m and the Dutch government has been pressuring Zimbabwe over the past two years to fulfil its international obligations. A special envoy has been appointed to negotiate with Zimbabwean officials.
“We wanted to take action earlier, but decided to wait for Biti’s proposal,” the group’s chairperson Lion Benjamins was quoted as saying. “But now we’re sick of waiting, so we have decided to take steps to show Zimbabwe we’re serious.”
The group lobbying European parliamentarians in an attempt to ensure the EU refuses to lift its sanctions on Zimbabwe until the compensation is paid. They are also lobbying the British government to release frozen assets of the Robert Mugabe regime in order to foot the land grab bill.
The Church of England Newspaper reports that the former Bishop of Harare, Dr. Nolbert Kunonga, has urged Zimbabwe strongman Robert Mugabe to expel the few remaining white farmers from their lands, telling a gathering of ZANU (PF) supporters that “Whites like other aliens should not be allowed to own land and other properties in the country as they are strangers.”
In an account of his sermon printed in The Zimbabwean, Dr. Kunonga said that he too had been engaged in a campaign of expropriating white-owned properties. “I took 3800 church properties in the region since their title deeds were in my name. There was no way the properties could remain under charge of the church controlled by whites and their black puppets. Bishops such as Julius Makoni, Chad Gandiwa and others are MDC-T and furthered western interests,” he said.
The controversial bishop, who was excommunicated by the Church of the Province of Central Africa after he quit the church to form his own Anglican Church of Zimbabwe, has waged a violent campaign of repression with the support of the security services against Anglicans who are loyal to the Bishop of Harare.
In 2011 the Archbishops of Canterbury, Central Africa, Southern Africa and Tanzania, along with local Anglican bishops, met with President Mugabe asking him to reassert the rule of law in Zimbabwe, and protect persecuted Anglicans from the depredations of Dr. Kunonga. The former bishop has been banned from travel to the U.S., the E.U. and the U.K. due to his complicity with the crimes of the Mugabe regime.
A long time supporter of the Zimbabwean president, Dr. Kunonga has campaigned against the opposition MDC party and its leader Morgan Tsvangirai. He told the gathering at the Dimbe Primary School near Marondera in Mashonaland East that MDC-T and “its western puppet, Morgan Tsvangirai, are agents of doom fighting to reverse the land reform programme and hand back land to the former colonial white masters.”
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“Tsvangirai is a white man masked in black skin. He is like the Biblical Pharaoh who enjoyed the suffering and economic deprivation of his own people. On the other hand, Mugabe is the Biblical Daniel sent to suffer for the cause of his people,” said Dr. Kunonga.
The former bishop added that those who drive out white farmers, MDC supporters and foreigners from their lands “will enter the kingdom of God.”
“As Christians; we must gear ourselves for a bloody war against white interests,” he said.
Rural Zimbabweans in need of UN food relief after Mugabe's 'successful land reform' Photo: WFP
Whereas the New York Times sang the praises of Zimbabwean “land reform” only a few weeks ago, the UN food agency has just said that hunger was worsening in Zimbabwe after erratic rains, shortages of seeds and fertiliser and “poor agricultural practices” in the troubled economy.
This, the UN said, had led to a reduction in fields planted with the main staple foods. The World Food Programme said cereal harvests in the current season were down by an estimated one-third compared with last year. It said about 1.1million rural people would need food aid up to December, rising to 1.6million in the traditionally “lean months” to March.
The agency’s latest bulletin yesterday said $119-million was needed for upcoming food assistance. It said food shortfalls were becoming especially critical in arid southern Zimbabwe where Matabeles live. The Zimbabwean leader has previously been accused of genocide in Matabeleland where 20 000 people were killed in the early 1990s, with a large proportion of the inhabitants fleeing to South Africa.
Irregular rains, poor agricultural practices and ongoing economic challenges have pushed Zimbabwe into an increasingly critical food security situation, the United Nations food relief agency warned.
Lydia Polgreen of The New York Times Photo: Twitter
However, the New York Times’s correspondent in Johannesburg, Lydia Pogreen, differs from the WFP assessment and sees a “golden lining” amid any dark clouds over Zimbabwean agriculture. On 20 July 2012 the New York-based liberal paper wrote:
“The success of these small-scale farmers has led some experts to reassess the legacy of Zimbabwe’s forced land redistribution, even as they condemn its violence and destruction. “
The paper also stressed that the illegal confiscation of white-owned land does not necessarily lead to greater farming productivity but creates greater equality. It quoted a Zimbabwean pro-Mugabe researcher as saying: “But does it share wealth more equitably? Does it give people a sense of dignity and ownership? Those things have value, too.”
According to the World Food Programme (WFP), the past several weeks have provided signs of growing distress across the African country with high food prices, empty silos and granaries, and a reduced cereal harvest, aggravating the country’s food security outlook.
“Late and erratic rains, poor agricultural practices, constrained access to inputs, and a reduction in planted area have all contributed to reducing the national cereal harvest by 33 per cent this year,” WFP said in a news release on its Zimbabwe Vulnerability Assessment (ZimVAC). It further noted that a lack of diversified livelihoods and the rising cost of living were combining to create a perfect storm of income and food insecurity.
WFP, in fact, pointed out that according to the ZimVAC, over 1.6 million Zimbabweans will be in need of food assistance during the peak hunger period spanning January to March 2013.
ZimVAC is an annual study conducted by the Government of Zimbabwe in collaboration with UN agencies and non-governmental organisations in order to estimate national food insecurity levels.
In response to the deteriorating food situation, the UN agency announced it was scaling up operations in conjunction with the Government and other stakeholders to provide a combination of food distribution and cash transfers to those in need.
The WFP further noted that it would require approximately $119 million to complete its operations in Zimbabwe until the end of March 2013, though it said that almost three-quarters of the funding has not yet been accounted for.
Johannesburg – In terms of the Constitution, the state has to ensure that citizens are able to obtain land rights, President Jacob Zuma said at the ANC’s policy conference on Tuesday.
“Our position is that the current willing buyer, willing seller model must be reviewed,” Zuma, who is also the ANC’s president, told delegates at Gallagher Estate in Midrand.
“It tends to distort the land market through inflating the prices of land earmarked for restitution.”
Zuma said the model made land reform expensive and delayed land restitution to the poor. A wide range of proposals had been submitted to the conference.
“[This will] enable faster movement on this matter, within the confines of the Constitution and the law,” Zuma said.
The ANC Youth League wants expropriation without compensation, and said it would push for a policy change at the conference. This has caused tensions between the ANCYL and opposition parties.
The youth league also wants the nationalisation of mines.
On Tuesday, Zuma said ANC delegates had to deliberate on how the state could obtain an equitable share from mineral resources.
“The state exercises sovereignty over the entire mineral and petroleum resources within the republic,” he said.
“In the same vein, Article (2)(1) of the United Nations Charter of Economic Rights and Duties of States, grants states full permanent sovereignty, including possession and disposal over all their natural resources.”
Zuma said the country needed to go “back to the basics” and take difficult decisions that it could not take in 1994. The structure of the apartheid economy had remained largely intact, and had not allowed for higher or inclusive growth.
“We must create a thriving mixed economy, where the state, private capital, co-operative and other forms of social ownership complement each other in an integrated way to eliminate poverty and foster shared economic growth,” he said.
“To achieve inclusive and labour absorbing growth, the state must play an active role in the economy, driving development especially in neglected areas.”
Freedom Front Plus leader Pieter Mulder has defended his controversial remarks on land in an interview with the Sunday Independent.
Mulder, who is also the deputy minister of agriculture, forestry and fisheries, said recently that there was sufficient evidence that there were no Bantu-speaking people in the Western Cape and north-western Cape, which constitute 40 percent of South Africa’s land.
Mulder told the weekly he was being misunderstood by his critics.
He said he was reacting to arguments that white people had stolen land.
“Technically, no one can lay claim to land in SA. We have got a complicated system. Nobody can say this is my total land,” he said.
Mulder said his argument came from history.
“When whites arrived (in the Western Cape), there were Khoi people, not blacks. In the Western Cape, brown people are complaining that they are not getting promotion in the Department of Correctional Services, but the ANC is using the land question,” he said.
He defended his use of the word “Bantu”, saying it was an internationally recognised word, and said he was angry about being called a racist.
“How would I have accepted the (government) post if I was racist? I get really angry about that.” – Sapa
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by Dan Roodt
