Tag: land reform

Another expensive black farming project tanks

President Jacob Zuma handed over 85 new tractors to the Masibuyele Emasimini project in Mpumalanga and KwaZulu-Natal in June 2010 to encourage small-scale farming.

The The R500-million for the project is wasted it seems. The project was intended to help “emerging black farmers” but is on the brink of collapse with only six of 32 tractors allocated to the DrJS Moroka municipality still running.

The government has meanwhile proposed that commercial farmers give half of their farm land to black workers.

The rest are idle because of lack of maintenance, timeslive reported.

Tractor drivers in Machiding, who battle to get diesel fuel and broken tractors repaired, went on strike early this month because, they say, they have not been paid.

In Mmametlhake and Marapyane, more than 30 farmers missed planting 65ha of sunflower seeds this season because 17 of the tractors allocated to their area were either broken or did not have fuel.

The African Farmers’ Association of SA said a total of 185000ha of once-productive, redistributed land in KwaZulu-Natal was standing idle as farmers waited to benefit from the project.

Emerging farmer Abios Maloka said 25ha of maize went to waste last season because the fields had not been ploughed in time .

“Instead of assisting farmers, [the programme] brought devastation and hopelessness. Before, we would plan in advance to get the fields ploughed but we were given a false sense of hope. Now we are sitting with heaps of fertiliser and seed that has not been used.”

Job Mthombeni, president of the African Farmers’ Association of SA in Mpumalanga, said the association had told the government of its concerns.

He said at first the project ran efficiently, with the shortage of tractors being the only shortcoming.

Expropriation Bill is unconstitutional

The new Expropriation Bill of 2015 was recently released by the minister of public works, Thulas Nxesi, and is due to be enacted into law this year. The 2015 Bill is just as unconstitutional as its predecessors of 2008 and 2013. It still gives the State the power to take ownership and possession of property of virtually any kind by notice to the owner – and without a prior court order confirming the constitutional validity of the expropriation.

The Bill also puts great pressure on expropriated owners to accept whatever amounts of compensation the State might offer. Particularly telling is a clause saying owners will be deemed to have accepted these amounts unless they sue for more within two months. Given the high cost of litigation, most people will be reluctant to risk this.

The Government claims the 2015 Bill will cure the constitutional defects in the current Expropriation Act of 1975, but this is simply not true. Mr. Nxesi’s Bill should thus be abandoned and replaced by a new amendment bill that is fully compliant with the Constitution. Such a bill can easily be crafted by amending the current Act in three key ways, as this issue of @Liberty explains.IRR_@Liberty_1-2015_-_4_March_2015 (1)

EFF targets mining magnates

Closing the EFF’s national people’s assembly in Bloemfontein yesterday, party president Julius Malema called on members to “block mines” in which magnate Patrice Motsepe (African Rainbow Minerals), Deputy President Cyril Ramaphosa ( Lonmin) and National Assembly Speaker Baleka Mbete (Gold Fields) had interests.

Malema described the proposed mass action as a protest against the way in which black economic empowerment benefited only a few wealthy, politically connected individuals instead of communities.

“We target these companies not because of the perceived ANC sympathies of the beneficiaries but because the money should be put to use to empower communities, and these people are the faces of the few who have become rich rather than creating community trusts,” he said.

Malema said yesterday the EFF intended always to act “within the law and the constitution. We are a disciplined organisation.”

He said land grabs were necessary to prevent the “land issue from leading to the civil strife it has caused in the rest of Africa”.

Police recently removed land invaders organised by the EFF from an area near Nelmapius in Pretoria. The squatters christened the area Malemaville.

But political analyst Ralph Mathekga said the EFF was being “disingenuous”.

“The biggest contradiction with the EFF is that you have a party that agrees to be in parliament and therefore agrees to be bound by the [legal] processes of that institution but chooses to use extra-legal means to achieve its objectives. It is disingenuous,” he said.

“[Malema’s] words would carry weight, perhaps, if they had refused to take part in elections and chosen to go outside the parliamentary process, but they have chosen not to do so. I think they are concerned about being seen to be swallowed up by parliamentary processes. No one is stopping them abdicating their positions in parliament.”

With only 25 seats in parliament, the EFF has so far failed to influence policy positions. It has instead resorted to showmanship, best characterised by the August 21 “pay back the money” chanting.

Political analyst JP Landman said the EFF’s utterances were good for democracy.

“What it has done is force people to take a stand. Since the EFF has come to parliament, the ANC has come out saying it is committed to land reform.”

The ANC, Landman said, was committed to land reform within the context of Section 25 of the constitution, which stipulated that property may be expropriated only by law, with payment of compensation.

Source: timeslive

Communists play cat and mouse with South African farmers

Hundreds of South Africa’s commercial farmers have now gone home after TAU SA’s yearly congress in Pretoria. In the north of the country they wait for the summer rain: their soil is prepared, the seeds are planted and the days grow hotter. Eyes look skyward for the first signs: they wait for the whip of the pre-storm wind, for that scent of moisture, for the quick darkening of the sky. Fifty three million South Africans depend on the country’s commercial farmers for their daily bread.

In his keynote Congress speech, TAU SA president Louis Meintjes covered many points – government propaganda on how “the whites” stole black land; farmworkers’ “rights” (but nothing about the rights of those who created the farms); how the country is run from Luthuli House, making the claim that SA is a democracy something of a farce. Then there’s the ubiquitous Freedom Charter, trotted out at every turn by the ANC, an outdated manifesto, written by white communists (notably Rusty Berstein), whose so-called principles are today only supported by countries like North Korea.

Then there’s the government’s 50/50 plan – the “sharing” of private farms with the workers which has elicited guffaws around the world and caused many potential investors to run for the hills. TAU SA says this latest caprice is a bridge too far. It is patently unacceptable, for many reasons but not least that it will cause hardship and hunger.

Then followed the president’s key question: where will it stop? Each demand’s acquiescence is followed by another demand. Despite reams being written about the empirical impracticality of the ANC’s farm policies, it is clear the government takes no notice. Willy nilly it surges ahead with plans and notions and white papers and green papers, each more ludicrous than the last. Communism’s DNA is well entrenched at Luthuli House, despite its spectacular failures in the twentieth century.

It should be therefore no surprise that the government proffered this policy during pre-1994 negotiations for the transfer of power in South Africa. It is a pity that many who negotiated with the ANC did not take cognizance of communism’s awful legacy.

Book

In his book How Communists Negotiate by American Admiral C. Turner Joy (MacMillan & Co, NY 1955), this Commander in Chief (UN Command) of Naval Forces in the Far East and American representative at the South Korean Armistice Conference at the end of the Korean War set out how the North Korean communists meticulously planned to get as much as they could without giving away anything to the other side. Virtually all of the processes he outlined regarding the negotiation process there were repeated by the ANC pre-1994.

His chapters include “Setting the stage”: Turner says the communists carefully consider the physical circumstances of the negotiating venue. (Remember the luxury game farms and the joint fishing trips of the Codesa protagonists. Then there were the well-dressed ANC big wigs in West Africa sporting English tweeds, briar pipes and a good British accent).

Chapter Two of Turner’s book – “The Delegation” – outlines how the very best intellectual minds and people of good appearance headed the communist teams at Korea. In pre-1994 SA, no rabble nor any toyi toyi-ing mobs were anywhere near the discussion venues. Chapter Three discusses the “Loaded Agenda” – “the Korean communists sought an agenda composed of conclusions favorable to their basic objectives, with some allowances for compromises if it suited them”, wrote Turner.

(It is rumoured that the Mozambican president Samora Machel told Nelson Mandela not to frighten SA’s whites because he would need them during the transition period so that the country wouldn’t disintegrate, as did Mozambique after independence. This practical approach to preserve the functional status quo during the early period after 1994 was sold as forgiveness and reconciliation on the ANC’s part, while in reality it was a calculated policy to preserve stability.)

Chapter Four – “Incidents” – refers to the communist policy of creating violent clashes and disturbances during the negotiation process in order to unnerve the other side who long for peace and want to hurry up the peace process to avoid further violence. (Nelson Mandela refused to renounce violence as a condition for his release. In fact after his release in 1990, violence increased exponentially until power was transferred in 1994.)

The Veto

The chapter on “The Veto” illustrates a Machiavellian method used to increase the chances of compromise from the other side. The stubborn recalcitrance of the North Korean side was designed to irritate the Americans into accepting some points in order to move ahead as they were tired of the delaying tactics.

Turner’s assessment of how the communists decide what is the truth and what is not is contained in the fascinating chapter “Truth and Consequence”. He says “the distortion of truth as practiced by the communists is a science”. (Remember Bishop Tutu’s assertion that there were “four kinds of truth” in his Truth and Reconciliation Commission summing up! Then we have the current “truth” about land theft, and a new “truth” about South Africa’s history, designed to engender a feeling of guilt among whites. This is entirely misplaced: without white settlement of Southern Africa, there would have been no present-day South Africa.

Whites found people who had no written language, who created no infrastructure and whose lives were beleaguered by battles with other tribes. They had no land titles and lived in primitive dwellings surrounded by sparse agriculture. Why the guilt among whites?)

Inches and Miles

The chapter most apt in relation to the TAU SA president’s speech is entitled “Inches and Miles”. Here Turner puts the case of “give an inch and they’ll take a mile“ so succinctly. He says:

“Communists regard any concession made by their opponents as a sign of weakness. Many Westerners entertain the notion that to accept some part of a communist negotiating proposal will encourage the communists to respond in kind.

“On the contrary such action is likely to induce an even more adamant attitude on their part. If Western negotiators agree to a communist proposal without insisting on an equal concession on another point, the communists conclude that their opponents are in a weak position and then they demand more.”

Thus the “fundamental techniques” to which Turner refers as part and parcel of communists’ negotiating processes are being used in South Africa 60 years after this Korean episode.

Anybody who cared to read a South African Communist Party directive on Reform and Revolution which was circulating in the mid-eighties would have seen that the doctrine was as sacred then as it was from the early days of communism. In para 13.2.3, it says “at the same time we must not mechanically dig in our heels against any future possibility to negotiate or compromise with other forces. We must remember that virtually all revolutionary struggles in the post-war period (Algeria, Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique) reached their final climax at the negotiating table.”

The TAU SA president asks: Do we know what we are supporting? Where will it stop? My personal opinion is that it is irresponsible to support any policy unless you know where it will end and what will be the final goals. He asks the ANC government: what is your end goal and when will you stop?

Herein lies the rub. Give and give and more will be asked of you until there is nothing more to give. Feed the crocodile and it will turn around and devour you. The ANC government cannot be allowed to usurp the commercial farming sector. It is to no one’s advantage. Indeed, it is a catastrophe waiting in the wings.

The folly of ‘land reform’

Despite the wholesale attack on agriculture and white farmers in South Africa threatening food security, The Times (Johannesburg) believes “land reform” or land grab is a worthy goal, seemingly blind to what a much milder form of the same policy has achieved in Zimbabwe.

Some 70% of farms in Gauteng are either standing idle or are being used as weekend party destinations for the wealthy black elite who use taxpayers’ money to buy up agricultural land.

This is no tiny matter, as the unfolding and alarming situation is strangely not reflected in the analysis, policies and goals of the main “representative” political parties.

After 20 years of democracy and never-ending Anglo-American attemps to stir racial animosity through their myriad of foreign-funded NGO’s – most advocating land grab – blacks are quitting rural areas in droves for the lure of city life.

Established commercial farmers are under pressure, often being forced to contend with deadly political slogans, drought, high input costs, competition from cheap imports and an unsympathetic government who simply ignore the scourge of farm murders. There were about 66 000 commercial farms in this country in 1994; today the number has dwindled to 44 000.

Thousands of white crosses dot the countryside, where farmers have had their weapons confiscated to face a low-intensity war waged against them.

Yet the role of farmers in ensuring our food security and providing employment cannot be overstated.

This year’s bumper maize crop, for example, is causing the price of the staple to drop, putting downward pressure on food prices against the backdrop of inflationary pressure, a weakening currency and a struggling economy.

Despite the abject failure of instilling land-grab fever, The Times chillingly argues that “it goes without saying that the land redistribution process needs to be ramped up”.

How? By arming not only small groups of terrorists against farmers but also whole brigades who will complete a Pol Pot-style ethnic cleansing or genocide?

The editorial continues unashamedly that “reforms to deal with the deep inequalities that persist in our rural areas need to be urgently effected”.

Really? When most inhabitants don’t care for farming and are actually abandoning land, what inequalities might those be?

Clearly cheap slogans and “representativity” have already lost much of their value in the face of reality.

“Land reform” – which envisages the expropriation of half of all commercial farmland without compensation on behalf of farmworkers – is not only unworkable and will destroy what is left of agriculture and food security. It is also deadly.

It would make far more sense to abandon this folly and to stop dreaming up grand imperial schemes to steal agricultural land and engineer famines. Stalinist planning really does not have the same allure any more, despite American attempts to restore the Cold War.

The Anglo-American NGO’s and their paid flunkeys need to pack their bags and leave.

Zim government can’t pay salaries

Zimbabwe’s economy is ‘regressing with deindustrialisation or informalisation; 84% of the economy is now informal’.

While liberal media in the West, such as the New York Times, have been lauding Zimbabwe’s antiwhite “land reform” and confiscation of white assets as a “success”, its government is currently unable to pay salaries.

According to reports, the Zimbabwean government “may be heading for a shutdown after it announced that it cannot guarantee pay dates for the civil service as the cash crunch bites deeper and with no solution in sight”.

Like many African countries, Zimbabwe has a vast army of government bureacrats constituting the “growing middle class” of the country who produce very little but receive 90% of the government budget. Since the ANC takeover of South Africa, government’s salary bill has also skyrocketed, with investment in infrastructure or maintenance of state assets slumping.

Zimbabwe’s Deputy Minister of Public Service, Labour and Social Welfare Tongai Muzenda told Senate last week that government “won’t guarantee any fixed pay dates”.

“We do not want to make false promises as the (Civil Service) Commission does not put the dates on the pay slips and that is going to be the case for some time until our economy has stabilised,” he said.

Analysts yesterday said that the admission by government poses a serious threat to the economy considering that salaries take a huge chunk of the recurrent expenditure.

“We are in shutdown,” an analyst said. “The budget is 90% recurrent and the bulk of that is in salaries”.

The last country to experience a government shutdown was the United States after Congress failed to enact legislation appropriating funds for fiscal year 2014. It lasted for 16 days.

During the US shutdown at least 800 000 federal employees were indefinitely furloughed (leave of absence) and 1,3 million reported for work without known payment dates.

Analysts say the civil service was the most secure borrower through Salaries Services Bureau and a payslip was a blank cheque to micro credit, which is driving the informal economy.

“That has been decimated. Once that is not there, banks won’t be able to lend. It means the lending platform has come to a halt,” an analyst said.

The civil service enjoys salary-based loans on the basis that government pays salaries on time.

Banks have stopped lending to companies due to rising defaults with statistics from the central bank showing that the ratio of non-performing loans to total loans had increased to 16,96% as at March 31 2014, up from 15,92%.

An NPL is when payments of interest and principal are past due by 90 days or more, or at least 90 days of interest payments have been capitalised, refinanced or delayed by agreement.

An executive with a commercial bank said measurement of economic policies was not on the basis of its nobility or objective but on the consequences.

“The consequence of announcing that there is no fixed date [for civil servants’ salaries] is that the economy has shut down,” he said.

Analysts say the only symbolism which was giving the economy a semblance of life was the fact that civil servants were being paid.

Government is the largest single employer and had until now provided fixed pay dates for its workers while other companies were defaulting.

“That symbolism has now come to an end by the removal of fixed dates and signifies government’s acceptance of default,” he said.

American actor and comedian Larry Fine once remarked that “the pain goes away on payday”, a feat that was only enjoyed by the civil service because the money was coming on time.

For the majority of Zimbabwean workforce that pain has become a permanent feature as payday becomes a moving target. For the unlucky ones, it has appeared only in dreams as companies took a battering from the harsh prevailing economic environment.

Statistics from the Zimbabwe Congress of Trade Unions (ZCTU) shows that 15 companies retrenched 2 491 in the first half of the year.

The Employers’ Confederation of Zimbabwe (EMCOZ) attributed the challenges in paying salaries on time to “a shortage of cash in the economy for various reasons which include minimum injection of new cash into the economy to grow the formal sector and inefficiencies inherent in an economic environment that is growing very slowly with some companies closing”.

“What is then happening is that producers of goods are having difficulties collecting cash from their sales and their suppliers are always sitting at their gates wanting to be paid for services rendered,” EMCOZ president Jack Murehwa said.

“When the company eventually gets a bit of cash from the overdue debtors, it then has to prioritise and decide how much goes to service providers, inputs, maintenance, salaries and many other costs.”

He said as a result of the limited cash, the company has to decide where to apply the cash — net salaries, pension, PAYE and other levies to be paid.

“As would be expected, in most cases, one or more of the commitments will suffer and obviously in instances where the extent of the unfunded commitments continues to grow, the formal business winds up,” he said.

Murehwa said under the current circumstances, employees who are still getting their salaries, although delayed, are in fact “in a better shape compared to those who have stopped thinking of ever getting a salary because the operation wound up or is as good as non-existent”.

Labour and Economic Development Research Institute of Zimbabwe director Godfrey Kanyenze said the private sector was a victim of the environment and government has to address the doing business aspect to help companies.

“How do you compete when you don’t have electricity? Government should address the cost of capital through re-engagement with multilaterals because no one will bring the money cheap, they demand a premium,” Kanyenze said.

Kanyenze said the economy was regressing with deindustrialisation or informalisation. He said 84% of the economy was now informal.

In his 2014 national budget presentation, Finance minister Patrick Chinamasa said the old economy was dead and a new one, based on the informal sector, had been born, urging financial institutions to cater for the small to medium sized enterprises.

But Kanyenze said informality was problematic as it did not contribute to taxes.

“You can’t celebrate informality. Everything informal is hidden. Much of the work is organised around sustenance,” Kanyenze said.

“There is nothing to celebrate unless there is a transition to formality.”

Kanyenze said the situation was dire and government alone could not resolve the crisis. He said it was now necessary to have a convergence of minds among all stakeholders so that everybody could put their hands on the plough.

Figures from the national statistical agency, Zimstat, show that imports in the first half of the year have been reduced to US$2,99 billion from US$3,92 billion in the comparable period last year. Exports went down to US$1,22 billion from US$1,54 billion.

A large portion of Zimbabwe’s foreign currency receipts come from migrant workers who have crossed the border to South Africa, mostly illegally. In Johannesburg the majority of restaurant and café waiters, maids and gardeners now come from Zimbabwe.

Western, mostly British, aid agencies are also active in Zimbabwe, propping up Mugabe’s regime which was installed by Britain in 1980 when Fleet Street gushed about “that brilliant Marxist-intellectual leader, Robert Mugabe”.

In the wake of collapsing companies, analysts say the low imports signify that the liquidity crunch is biting.

ANC’s plan to make white owners hand their land over to workers

Since 1994 white farmers have been murdered in alarming numbers.

Rural Development and Land Reform Minister Gugile Nkwinti wants white commercial farmers to hand over half their farms to black farmworkers.

Nkwinti said in an interview this week that stakeholders in commercial agriculture, including farmers, trade unions, farmworkers and the agricultural business sector, have until April next year to react to his proposals.

  • The commercial farmers retain 50% of the farm;
  • The labourers on the land assume ownership of the remaining 50%, proportional to their contribution to the development of the land based on the number of years they had worked on the land;
  • The government pays for the 50% to be shared by the labourers, but the money will not go to the farmer. It will go to an investment and development fund to be jointly owned by the parties constituting the new ownership regime. The investment and development fund will be used for reinvestment in the farm, skills improvement and to pay out those who want to opt out of the arrangement;
  • Current tenancy protection remains and it will be balanced by a regime of duties and responsibilities that worker-dwellers must comply with if they want to stay on the farm;
  • Of the 50% to be shared by labourers, all labourers with a history of between 10 and 25 consecutive years of disciplined service will share 10%, those with 25 to 50 years’ consecutive service will share 25%, those with more than 50 years’ consecutive service will share 50% and 15% will be available for household subsistence farming; and
  • Land rights management committees, consisting of local people, will be established to solve local disputes.

Nkwinti said he had come up with the proposal because the previous system had “many deficiencies”.

Land reform has been brought into sharp focus by the decline of agriculture in neighbouring Zimbabwe, where many white commercial farmers have been violently evicted and their property rights trampled by the state.

Some 90% of farms redistributed to South Africa’s black population from white farmers are not productive.

Since 1994 white farmers have been murdered in alarming numbers.

About 50 people on average are murdered in South-Africa per day, of which at least 20 are white(95+ % black on white murder rate), although whites make up only 9% (4 500 000) of the demographics in South-Africa.

 

Blade says Nkandla is white people’s lies

Blade telling Nkwinti to take white farms, not mines
Blade telling Nkwinti to take white farms, not mines

Higher Education Minister Blade Nzimande and member of the SACP has described what is being written about President Jacob Zuma and his Nkandla residence as “white people’s lies”.

He has been the General Secretary of the South African Communist Party since 1998.

Nzimande was speaking at an event to honour President Zuma held at the University of Zululand, at KwaDlangezwa.

Nzimande has heaped praise on President Zuma, saying it is appropriate to honour him for his contribution to peace in KwaZulu-Natal and education in the country.

He’s dismissed as “lies perpetuated by white people” reports about Nkandla and Zuma.

In 2007 Malawian businessman Charles Modise claimed he made a R500,000 donation to the South African Communist Party in 2002.

He claimed he gave the money, packed in black plastic bags, to Willy Madisha, who in turn swore he transported the money in the boot of his car to SACP general secretary Nzimande. However, Nzimande denied ever receiving the money, also calling the allegations “lies perpetuated by white people”.

Despite being a Communist, Mzimande is against the nationalisation of mines, strangely stating that it is not “inherently progressive” as it depended on which class interests were being advanced.

Nzimande supports the accelerated transfer of white-owned land to blacks however and warned earlier that South Africa would become like Zimbabwe if whites continue to own land.

Nzimande said the people needed to know why banks were still financing farmers using the “same [free market] methods used during apartheid”.

“One of the biggest obstacles facing land reform is the willing buyer-willing seller principal,” he said.

He said with that principle, it was those who already owned the land—and not the landless—who benefited.

South African government’s communist land policy: final proposals

Department-of-ruraldevlandref

 

FINAL POLICY PROPOSALS ON “STRENGTHENING THE RELATIVE RIGHTS OF PEOPLE WORKING THE LAND”

STRENGTHENING RELATIVE RIGHTS OF PEOPLE WORKING THE LAND.
Policy Proposals: Final Draft. 21 February, 2014.

A. CONTEXT
The broad context for all rural development and land reform policies is the Constitution and the law of the Republic, particularly sections 25, 26, 27 and 36 of the Constitution. Secondly, it is the Freedom Charter (FC), which declares that ‘South Africa Belongs To All Who Live In It, Black And White!’ Thirdly, it is the National Development Plan (NDP). Fourthly, it is Agenda 21 of the United Nations. Lastly, General Comment No.7 (1997). The right to adequate housing (Article 11 (1) of the Covenant): forced evictions

The tension to which these provisions are particularly pertinent, in the case of rural development and land reform, is the necessity to address historical land hunger, which could be absolute in most instances; and, extreme concentration of land ownership and control in a few hands, on the other hand.

The mandate of the Department of Rural Development and Land Reform is to mediate a ‘just and equitable’ redistribution of land across these two disparate and potentially conflictual patterns of land ownership and control.

The principles and the strategic thrust underlying land reform, as set out in the Green Paper on Land Reform, are as follows:

deracialising the rural economy;
democratizing the allocation and use of land across gender, race and class; and,
sustained production discipline for food security (and food sovereignty).

The strategic thrust, also set out in the Green Paper, is that land reform should be pursued with minimal or no disruption to food production and security.

The Department defines land reform inclusively of the following four functions or pillars:

restitution of land rights;
redistribution of land;
land tenure reform; and,
development of the land.

It further defines the strategic objectives of land reform as two-fold:

that all land reform farms are 100% productive during the 2014-2019 Medium Term Strategic Framework (MTSF) period; and,
rekindling the class of black commercial farmers which was deliberately and systematically destroyed by the 1913 Natives Land Act, re-inforced by other subsequent pieces of legislation enacted by successive Colonial and Apartheid regimes.

B. SOME POLICY PERSPECTIVES AND CONSIDERATIONS

The Draft Bill consolidating the Extension of Security of Tenure Act (Esta) and the Labour Tenants Act (LTA) seeks to deepen the security of tenure of farm-workers and farm-dwellers, without threatening household food security and national food sovereignty. This sensitive balance between security of tenure rights, on the one hand, and food security and sovereignty, on the other, must be maintained at all times.

For the benefit of people who have not had sight of the pertinent provisions of the FC, the NDP, Agenda 21 and General Comment No. 7 (1997), we highlight such pertinent provisions below.

Clauses of the FC:

Clause 3: The People Shall Share In The Country’s Wealth!

The national wealth of our country, the heritage of South Africans, shall be restored to the people;
The mineral wealth beneath the soil, the banks and monopoly industry shall be transferred to the ownership of the people as a whole;
All other industry and trade shall be controlled to assist the well being of the people;
All people shall have equal rights to trade where they choose, to manufacture and to enter all trades, crafts and professions.

Clause 4: The Land Shall Be Shared Among Those Who Work It.

Restrictions of land ownership on racial basis shall be ended, and all the land re-divided amongst those who work it to banish famine and land hunger;
The state shall help the peasants with implements, seeds, tractors and dams to save the soil and assist the tillers;
Freedom of movement shall be guaranteed to all who work on the land;
All shall have the right to occupy land wherever they choose;
People shall not be robbed of their cattle, and forced labour and farm prisons shall be abolished.

Agenda 21:

In 1988, in the Global Strategy for Shelter to the Year 2000, adopted by the General Assembly in its Resolution 43/181, the “fundamental obligation [of Governments] to protect and improve houses and neighborhoods, rather than damage or destroy them” was recognized.

Agenda 21 stated that “People Shall Be Protected By Law Against Unfair Eviction From Their Homes and Land.” In the Habitat Agenda, Governments committed themselves to “protecting all people from, and providing legal protection and redress for, forced evictions that are contrary to the law, taking human rights into consideration; [and] when evictions are unavoidable, ensuring, as appropriate, that alternative suitable solutions are provided.”

The National Development Plan:

Chapter Six of the NDP. Sums up the essence of an integrated and inclusive economy in the following ‘Key Points’:

Rural communities require greater social, economic and political opportunities to overcome poverty.
To achieve this, agricultural development should introduce a land reform and job creation / livelihoods strategy that ensures rural communities have jobs.
Ensure quality access to basic services, health care, education and food security.
Plans for rural towns should be tailor-made according to the varying opportunities in each area. Intergovernmental Relations should be addressed to improve rural governance.

General Comment No.7 (1997):

In its General Comment No.4 (1994), the Committee on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights observed that all persons should possess a degree of security of tenure which guarantees legal protection against forced eviction, harassment and other threats. It concluded that forced evictions are, prima facie, incompatible with the requirements of the Covenant.

The term “forced evictions” as used throughout this General Comment is defined as the permanent or temporary removal against their will of individuals, families and /or communities from the homes and/or land which they occupy, without the provision of, and access to, appropriate forms of legal or other protection. The prohibition on forced evictions does not, however, apply to evictions carried out by force in accordance with the law and in conformity with the provisions of the International Covenants on Human Rights.

In case where eviction is considered to be justified, it should be carried out in strict compliance with the relevant provisions of international human rights law and in accordance with general principles of reasonableness and proportionality. The Committee considers that the procedural protections which should be applied in relation to forced evictions include:

an opportunity for genuine consultation with those affected;
adequate and reasonable notice for all affected persons prior to the scheduled date of eviction;
information on the proposed evictions, and, where applicable, on the alternative purpose for which the land or housing is to be used, to be made available in reasonable time to all those affected;
especially where groups of people are affected, government officials or their representatives to be present during an eviction;
all persons carrying out eviction to be properly identified;
evictions not to take place in particularly bad weather or at night, unless the affected persons consent otherwise;
provision of legal remedies; and,
provision, where possible, of legal aid to persons who are in need of it to seek redress from the courts.

We, therefore, need to develop a system of incentives and disincentives to encourage those with vested interest in the land to conduct their relationship around land according to the dictates of these Clauses of the Freedom Charter, the National Development Plan, the UN’s Agenda 21 and General Comment No.7 (1997), with whatever necessary adaptations here and there, as the case might be, given peculiar conditions and circumstances.

C. COMBINING SHARE-EQUITY WITH CO-MANAGEMENT

A combination of Share-equity and Co-management is the key to achieving this system of positive incentives and disincentives. This should be built into the current Draft Bill, so that it could assist government manage unintended consequences to the re-opening of land claims and the introduction of the Exceptions to the 1913 cut-off date for the Khoi and the San descendants, historical landmarks and heritage sites. These Exceptions need not fall under the framework of the Restitution of Land Rights Act (as amended).

As I understand it, put generally, the LTA provides the capacity to translate tenancy rights into the right to claim land restitution, as well as securing protection against eviction (with no reference to whether or not such eviction was justified or arbitrary), after a certain length of time working and residing on a farm. Even justified eviction (we must define, and differentiate between, arbitrary and legitimate eviction upfront) would require the evictor to ensure that the evicted has alternative residence.

The Share-equity Scheme could, and should, as circumstances might dictate, be complemented by the establishment of Sustainable Rural Settlements on land acquired either through share-equity rights accumulated by workers over time, as workers on farms, or, through state interventions.

The United Nations ascribes effectiveness of “sustainability” to the following conditions:

Socio-cultural development: health, education and recreation;
Economic development;
Environmental development;
Institutional / political support; and,
Morality and aesthetic relational values.

These Sustainable Rural Settlements would achieve at least three objectives:
secure the residential tenure of the farm-dweller/worker;
enable him/her to sell his/her labour-power across the fence, without fear of eviction; and,
strengthen his/her bargaining power in advancing worker rights and improving his/her conditions of living.

With the advent of the Land Rights Management Committees, which are multi-stakeholder platforms, the relations being created in these proposals should be easily managed.

But, there does not seem to be any sort of duty and responsibility placed on the worker-dweller to play their role in ensuring that their right of tenure to the land is earned; and, could be systematically defended. This is a serious gap, viewed against the Third Principle and the Strategic Thrust of land reform, as they stand now. South Africa is a constitutional democracy. Everybody’s rights are enshrined in the Bill of Rights; and, our Courts guard the observance of these rights very jealously. But, in any constitutional democracy, rights are balanced with responsibilities.

The system we introduce, therefore, must take this necessary balance into cognisance. We have a system of rights and responsibilities; duties and services; and, opportunities and constraints, all of which hang on the authority of the constitution and the law.

D. WHAT IS TO BE DONE?

Protect and promote relative rights of people working the land.

The regime being proposed here is based on the relative contribution of each category of people to the development of defined land portions or farm units. The historical owner of the land automatically retains 50% of the land, while the labourers on the land assume ownership of the remaining 50%, proportional to their contribution to the development of the land, based on the number of years they had worked on the land.

The Government will pay for the 50% to be shared by the labourers, but the money will go into an investment and development fund (IDF) to be jointly owned by the Parties constituting the new ownership regime. The Fund will be used to develop the managerial and production capacity of the new entrants to land ownership, to further invest on the farm as well to ay out people who wish to opt out of the new regime.

Keep the current regime of tenancy protection and derived rights, but balance that up by introducing a regime of duties and responsibilities which the worker-dweller must observe and comply with, in order to sustain the share-equity regime being introduced here.

All labourers who would have worked on a farm for ten consecutive years (but less than twenty-five years) of disciplined service, based on the regime of duties and responsibilities historically obtaining on the farm, the worker-dweller must be entitled to ten percent share-equity on the land, based on its market value.

Should the worker/dweller wish to leave the farm, after ten years of disciplined service, having earned the ten percent share-equity ownership of the land, he/she should be compensated to that extent, over and above whatever other rights were due to him or her, as an employee.

After ten years of disciplined service, the Farm Manager should, by force of law, introduce the worker-dweller to basic elements of farm management, reflective of the new relational dynamics.

After twenty-five years of disciplined service, the farm-worker/dweller should be entitled to twenty-five percent share-equity on the land. The same conditions, which define the relationship between the farmer and the worker/ dweller, as set out in the relevant paragraphs above, hold in this regard as well.

After fifty years of disciplined service, the farm-worker/dweller shall be entitled to fifty percent share-equity on the land; and, all the conditions as set out in the relevant paragraphs above apply.

In the event a worker/dweller failed to comply with the regime, as set out in the contract of disciplined service, the Farm Management (reflective of the new regime) is obliged to take the matter up with the Land Rights Management Committee (LRMC). The LRMC has to consider the matter and advise on steps to be taken. In the event the decision is that the worker-dweller has to leave the farm, the Municipal Council must provide the farm-dweller with suitable accommodation, within a prescribed period.

If the farm-dweller had not completed ten years of service, the ordinary conditions provided for by the country’s labour relations system will apply.

If the farm-dweller had completed ten years of service, and had earned tenancy rights, the LRMC has to take this into account if it determines that the farm-dweller had to leave the land.

These conditions should constitute a regime of the protection of relative rights on land, in alignment with the provisions of the Freedom Charter, the NDP and the United Nations Agenda 21.

E. HOW IS THIS WORKER-EQUITY GOING TO BE FINANCED?

There are two main sources of financing the worker-equity:
through the Land Reform Programme; and,
through own historical contribution by the worker.

The Land Tenure Act (and so should the consolidated draft of ESTA and the LTA) recognized the farm-worker’s cumulative rights, based not only on the fact that a worker lived on the farm for a particular period, but on contribution he /she made to the development of the farm, through his / her labour power.

That labour power was never fully compensated for, in the form of wages. That much is clearly demonstrated by the vast difference between the affluence of the farmer and the abject poverty of the farm-worker.

The relative equity stakes recognize this full contribution, which the exploitative wages have denied the workers for all of those years. The contribution by the government is an attempt at restoring the dignity of the worker.

Contribution by the state must go to further development of the farm. With the acquisition of equity by farm-workers must come a fundamental change in the control mechanism of the farm.

The acquisition of equity is, and must be seen to be, a fundamental game-changer. It introduces co-management of the farm, based on relative equity-holdings and the capacity of each participant in production and management.

The equity-holders must establish an Investment and Development Fund (IDF) which must be representative of all equity-holders to the farm.

The Government (drdlr) will deposit its contribution into the IDF, not to the farmer, for that would be double compensation. He/she will benefit, like all others, from dividends allocated by the IDF. With that contribution, the government earns the status of Ex-officio member of the management of the Fund; and, should be entitled to a single representative on it.

We are, therefore, introducing a system of collective ownership, based on relative equity-holdings. However, although the government has full speaking rights in the management of the IDF, it will not have voting rights. Those rights should be the preserve of the equity-holders.

F. EXPLANATORY NOTE

Figure 1 below is attempting to illustrate the workings of the Model described above. It is a graphic attempt at operationalising the constitutional principle of ‘Just and equitable’ re-distribution of land.

Figure 1: A Radical Redistributive Model For Land Reform

G. CONCLUSION

The Extension of Security of Tenure Act and the Labour Tenants Act were meant to strengthen the security of tenure of farm-workers. They were meant to make it relatively difficult for the farmer or farm manager to evict farm-dwellers. At least not without due process! However, arbitrary evictions continue to be the order of the day. The policy measures introduced here, backed by several authoritative constraints, are meant to change the agricultural landscape fundamentally. What is being introduced here is not just a humane set of socio-economic relations; it is a redistributive model of agricultural growth.

These policy proposals are meant to strengthen the position of both the farm-worker and the farmer, as people working the land. These proposals recognize that both the worker and the farmer have vested interest in the land; and, both want to improve their living conditions through working the land.

There is a direct relationship between these policy proposals and the ANC’s policy on the limitation of land holdings by private individuals and entities, now contained in the Agricultural Landholdings Policy Framework of the Drdlr. The Model can easily be adapted, where there is enough goodwill between a farmer and his or her employees, in the implementation of the land tenure model of ‘Freehold with limited extent’, and its cousin, land access and ownership by foreign nationals: ‘A combination of freehold with limited extent and leasehold’.

The legal rights of these two important actors, in so far as they relate to the farm, are historically not equal. The farmer is, historically, the sole owner of the land and has full responsibility for its up-keep and maintenance, including ensuring that workers on the land have decent living conditions, are paid decent wages and he pays rates and income tax, while the farmworker does not carry such legal burdens. This relativity of rights and responsibilities is fully recognized.

However, these policy proposals introduce a new system of substantively recognizing the relative contributions of the farmer and farm-workers to the development of the farm as well as the integrality of their relative rights on the land – on the one hand, the farmer has original rights while, on the other, farm-workers have accumulated or secondary rights, as defined in the Land Tenure Act.

The moral basis for these proposals is that fellow South Africans who benefitted from the proceeds of the land dispossession wars and the race-based segregation policies and laws of successive Colonial and Apartheid regimes have a moral duty and responsibility to contribute to the restoration of justice and national reconciliation effort. Secondly, maintaining the current status quo is politically undesirable and unsustainable.

Nkwinti, GE (MP)
Minister: DEPARTMENT OF RURAL DEVELOPMENT AND LAND REFORM

Land reform and ‘Boerehaat’

roodt_dan_wikiby Dan Roodt

Proletarian internationalism has never really inspired the so-called “silent majority” in South Africa, so it must count as one of the failures of the Left that they never actually persuaded “the masses” to wave hammer-and-sickle flags and demand instant collectivism.

However, most of what passes in SA for leftist politics is ethnic politics. Behind the so-called “land issue” is the land owners, the majority of whom happen to be Afrikaners. Now, those are the people the Left loves to hate, as in “Kill a Boer, kill a farmer”, “dubula ibhunu” and the other versions in ten official languages, except Afrikaans. Although, given that the editor of Beeld has now succumbed to vilifying the university-age children of his own readers as “Nazis”, there might be some official Afrikaans version of “skiet die Boer vrek, ons soek sy grond” quite soon.

Surprisingly little has been written about the phenomenon of Boerehaat or “hatred of the Boers” as it exists in South Africa, Britain, Australia and many other Commonwealth countries. It is at least as pervasive as anti-Semitism and is characterised by:

  • denying that Afrikaners exist as a nation or ethnic group,
  • considering them to be inferior or less intelligent than other white nations (especially the English);
  • seeing Afrikaners as “in-bred” or “parochial” and not cosmopolitan enough;
  • seeing Afrikaners as “inherently evil” and therefore without any legal claim to land or other property in South Africa;
  • considering Afrikaans to be a “mixture of languages” or a bastardised Creole without any cultural, literary or aesthetic value (whereas linguistically Afrikaans is perhaps the purest of all the Germanic languages).
A slew of Boerehaat photographers seek out "ugly" subjects as representative of Afrikaners, such as this photo by American Roger Ballen
A slew of Boerehaat photographers seek out “ugly” subjects as representative of Afrikaners, such as this photo by American Roger Ballen

The Boerehaat game has now been going on for so long that everyone in South Africa is very comfortable playing it. Just about everything has been taken from Afrikaners except their very lives and a few family-owned farms that still produce what South Africans buy in the supermarkets. However, the supermarkets and especially the dairy companies have squeezed the farmers to such an extent that milk is actually produced at a loss so that soon all milk will be imported, laced with imported powdered milk which may or may not contain all kinds of other substances.

The destructive rage of the South African Left compares very well with that of the Soviet revolutionaries whom Solzhenitsyn accused of killing 63 million Russians or Mao’s Red Guards or Pol Pot’s Khmer Rouge who also desired a “big transformation”.

 Most of what passes for SA history these days is a Marxist fairytale of the class struggle, which has been conveniently racialised to fit in with American race ideology that sees whites as inherently evil (being “racists”) and blacks as innocent victims of such congenital white evil.

Who really knows what happened in 1913 when the so-called Land Act was passed? Once you throw out the Deeds Office in your red fervour, you are left with competing “land claims” which will be decided by whom will get the most hysterical in denouncing the evil of his adversary. Now, the South African Left are also terrorists, as we know. If we define terrorism of the Church Street or Amanzimtoti bomb variety as “talking with the megaphone of amputated limbs”, we can already predict that a group of diffident farmers quietly appealing to economic rationality will lose the shouting match even before it begins. In fact, they have already lost it. So we know what is coming and it will be ugly for all concerned. More radicalism, more farm murders, more sadistic violence which will eventually tear down the vestiges of Roman-Dutch or “colonial law” that remain in this agonising society.

The Marxists feel cheated out of the second phase of the revolution and then the evils of apartheid get bigger and bigger the further we move away from it in time.  So the Boerehaat is constantly rising and the propaganda just keeps coming. The beast and its bloodlust have not been sated yet.

Most Afrikaners now believe that some kind of violent upheaval or civil war or apocalypse in South Africa is inevitable. You just have to read all the underground novels that mainstream publishers won’t touch and that outsiders do not even know about, Afrikaans having been declared officially dead, especially now that it is being extirpated at the tertiary level.

I find it ironic that the radio journalist Stephen Grootes should mention Robespierre in his article Land reform: Still caught up in politics, as I have often thought that the years since the mid-1980s will in future Afrikaner history be known as The Terror or “La terreur”. We are already in it and there seems to be no end in sight. Every day brings news of new atrocities being committed in the countryside.

Last night someone contacted me from Richards Bay where a young Afrikaner girl of 16 had been kidnapped by two black men and sexually molested by them, although by some miracle she was not raped. There is no police protection worth mentioning as the police are also black and therefore often sympathetic to criminals and not to their white victims. So the girl and her single mother had to look for help on Facebook. Fortunately people responded to their plight but they have fled their home and are hiding elsewhere. The girl has to write matric this year, while she cowers in someone else’s house, wondering when her “liberators” will be back.

This is what South Africa has come to: a country where law and order are increasingly falling by the wayside. But our zealous leftists want more revolution, stirring up more hatred every day.

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Education is about values… not a commodity

Top ten academic performers at Hoërskool Wagpos, an Afrikaans government school in South Africa
Top ten academic performers at Hoërskool Wagpos, an Afrikaans government school in South Africa

by TAU Bulletin

And a school matriculation certificate is not a ticket to the corner office, the VIP lift and the executive washroom.

Education is holistic: it is not a voucher for a comfortable life, nor a ticket to the turnstile of good fortune. The dictionary defines education as “the systematic development and cultivation of the mind and other natural powers. It begins in the nursery, continues through school and also through life. The impartation of knowledge by others is but a part of education.” The dictionary’s synonyms for education include “breeding, cultivation, culture, development, discipline, information, instruction, knowledge, learning, nurture, reading, schooling, study, teaching, training and tuition”.

Education is an intrinsic ingredient of a culture: it is the living embodiment of the passing from generation to generation the means by which the people of that culture conduct their lives.

The exuberance displayed by South Africa’s Minister of Basic Education Ms. Angie Motshekga when she recently announced the matriculation pass rate for South African pupils had jumped to 76.5% (from 60,6% in 2009) was met with scepticism and even derision. According to AfriForum, the actual pass rate was less than 38%, this because only half of the students who enrolled at the beginning of their school careers finished to write Grade 12, the matric year.

Mr. Tinyiko Maluleke, deputy vice chancellor of student affairs at the University of Johannesburg asked in a hard-hitting article (Independent 5.1.14) whether the matric certificate could be trusted. He said the certificate was in danger of “meaninglessness, worthlessness and irrelevance. The country’s entire education system is at issue, and 20 years of democracy have not taught teachers and principals (of mainly black schools) to stop striking during school hours.”

Professor Jonathan Jansen, rector and vice-chancellor of the University of the Free State weighed in, saying SA’s education system is a “fraud”. He concurred with other critics that the results proffered by the Minister were “grossly misleading”. “We know that the top 5% of Grade 6 pupils know more mathematics than the bottom 20% of the maths teachers in the same grade. We know that South Africa was dead last, just above Yemen, at the bottom end of international rankings on science and mathematics.” Mediocrity has been institutionalized, he declared, while “government officials hope we are all ignorant enough to accept the ‘official lies’” because of the way the so-called pass figures were manipulated. Pass rates were “pulled up by white kids” said Graeme Bloch of Wits University. “Sorry to be racial, but if you are born on the right side of the tracks, you have a 100% chance of getting matric”.

(We must pause here to comment on this “if you are born” comment. Who you are when you are born is the result of your genetic background, a consequence of your family’s ancestral lineage. And if that history is replete with achievement, initiative, hard work, the ability to overcome obstacles and a skill and desire to move forward and improve yourself, then comparing those “born on the right side of the tracks” with those ”born into” poverty is fallacious. This delusion infers that there is some sort of pantry in the sky which dishes out ways of life to some, and other less salubrious ways of life to others.

Everyone in South Africa is a genetic descendant of his ancestors. Blaming poor education results on the “privilege” of some is disingenuous. Cultural backgrounds have played a huge role in education result disparities – Africans had no written word, while South Africa’s first-world educational system was brought to this country by European settlers who then superimposed it on Africans. Similar occurrences took place during the colonial times in other new-world lands.

As well, using the term “previously disadvantaged” (liberally utilized to neutralize white academic achievements) is to refute history. Indeed, Africans were actually advantaged by European settlement. From where did they receive everything they have now – their ability to communicate in a world language, their education, health, legal and legislative system, and the country’s first-world infrastructure?)

The laughing stock

Setting a matriculation pass mark of 30% makes South Africa the world’s laughing stock. Average grade three literacy achievements only reached 35%, with numeracy at 28%. In grade six, the language average is 28% and mathematics is 30%. These figures are a reflection of how the government has managed an education system not generic to Africa. Cultural and language problems have been swept under the carpet in the government’s rush to “prove” that education is improving, when the opposite is in fact true.

Education is not just learning – it is how you interpret, utilize and develop that which is taught. In a country where mediocrity is the norm, it is not surprising that many waving their certificates cannot get work. Dumbing down the worth of this certificate has caused heartache to millions. They were led to believe that their 30% pass would get them a job. The government has sacrificed young people as scapegoats to foster the illusion that the state’s education system is delivering.

Quality is the name of the game. Said Anne Oberholzer, Independent Examinations Board’s (IEB) CEO: “If I’m prepared to spend my salary on my child’s education … rather than buying clothes or a fancy car, you can’t stop me from doing that”. The excellent IEB pass rate was the result of “extra hard work” rather than necessarily school resources. “Success at matric starts way back – matric is a combination of all the years of school exposure”, she said.

It is a simple case of values and norms. If black teachers go on strike during class teaching times, if pupils burn down schools, if ministers don’t get school books to pupils in time, and if the government shows by example that one really doesn’t need a good education to get rich as a party hack with a cushy government job (where capacity doesn’t even come into it), why bother to learn? Why have unbelievably bad results in black schools earned the ire of government when at the same time they show by their actions you don’t have to get good marks to join the government jobs gravy train?

And why try to achieve through hard work and sacrifice when government will legally provide you with a goodly share of someone else’s company just because you are black? In both the public and private sector, there are ample opportunities to feed at the trough, so why struggle at school and university? This same hypocrisy extends to government complaining about the quality of teachers, while universities across the board give preference to blacks for academic posts. A University of Johannesburg advertisement for the Deputy Vice Chancellor: Strategic Services (24.1.14) says it is “committed to taking persons with disabilities and the potential of historically disadvantaged individuals into account in making this appointment”. So if merit is not a criteria for university posts, how will government produce good teachers, and how can this in the end provide competent students and graduates for the country’s future?

Entrepreneurship

Entrepreneurship can’t be taught, yet it is the well-spring of all economies. It emanates from within and it is difficult, fraught with risk and sometimes very disappointing. It is easier to leaching on someone else’s success, a path made easier by government policies. While informal entrepreneurship is well entrenched in South Africa – small traders in townships and city streets sell goods someone else has produced – this doesn’t grow the economy.

Where is black entrepreneurial contribution to the formal economy? A weekly Pretoria is enthusiastically supported by locals and the diplomatic community. Selling mostly food, more than seventy stalls are manned by whites, Portuguese, Indians, a Moroccan family, Greeks, some Chinese. There is not one black South African stall. What is the point of an education that cannot extend to doing something for yourself?

Farming

Paging through any SA farm magazine shows the extent to which farmers have themselves developed and streamlined their profession. They haven’t just studied agriculture, they have applied it, improved on it, created new processes, adapted international methods to South African conditions and perfected agriculture to such an extent that 35 000 of them can feed 53 million people. Education was just the beginning. Without application, initiative, resilience, the ability to overcome hardship and plain hard work, where would South Africa be in terms of food security?

Most government officials and politicians see themselves as an intrinsic part of first world South Africa. They wear the clothes and drive the cars, but many do not exhibit the values generic to this first world. Education in this context should mean:

  • solving the problem yourself, not hiring a consultant;
  • making sure the traffic lights work and if they don’t, ensuring that a point officer keeps the traffic flowing until the robot is fixed;
  • making sure our cities are not littered and polluted until they look like Nairobi or Lagos;
  • answering the phone, replying to the e-mail and delivering the service to the people who pay your salaries;
  • owning up, with an apology, to the fact that many in government are incompetent and are unable to run South Africa as it should be run;
  • accepting criticism without retaliation in the form of racism accusations;
  • deciding that police asleep on duty, taking bribes and generally running amok with weapons is not worthy of a law-enforcement body;
  • immediately sacking all persons with criminal records employed in government;
  • not contemptuously ignoring court judgments;
  • ridding yourself of a completely unjustified entitlement syndrome because you didn’t create what you are now enjoying;
  • not wasting taxpayer’s money with impunity, and being contemptuous when confronted with this fact;
  • not handing over productive farms to incompetents and admitting this policy is a failure;
  • trying to emulate those who achieve instead of denigrating them and accusing them of being ”privileged”.

A point to ponder about education: Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe has three university degrees, but he remains a savage tyrant, contemptuous of his people’s quality of life, of democracy and of what others think of him. Education without values is truly just a piece of paper!

South Africa’s black colonialists

roodt_dan_wiki

by Dan Roodt

Recently I watched a so-called “debate” on SABC2 on what was referred to as “land reform”. Most of the participants were calling for a Zimbabwe-style expropriation of Afrikaner-owned land.

For some time now I have been thinking that South Africa is perhaps the first country in the world afflicted with black colonialism. As ever, one’s perception of our socio-political situation is entirely determined by the paradigm or worldview from which one gazes upon South Africa.

Notwithstanding the anti-Western rhetoric of the black colonialists, they share the same culture, language and imperialist disdain for us as Lords Milner or Kitchener of yore, burning everything in sight and herding us into concentration camps. Black and white colonialists on the SABC2 were united in their thirst for land and for forcibly removing the rightful owners – like any conquistador in the days of the Spanish Empire.

Of course, black colonialism often clothes itself in leftist idiom. Hence, the white British Marxist Professor Ruth Hall of UWC was herself calling for the eviction of Afrikaner natives from their land in favour of some new form of plantation slavery, preferably lorded over by people with Ph.D.’s in dubious disciplines from the United Kingdom.

Seated in air-conditioned offices, the black colonialists wish to evict Afrikaner peasants from their ancestral lands. The colonialists commute in spanking new German luxury cars while the sunburnt Afrikaners in shorts and velskoens drive around on dusty roads in aged utilitarian bakkies. The arrogance of this colonialist land-grab project rivals and surpasses the infamous Berlin Conference of 1884-85.

Our minds, like our universities, have been colonised. Hence the almost complete lack of critical perspective on the colonialist enterprise known as the “New South Africa”. The black colonialists are bourgeois through and through, vacillating between a kind of British comprador consciousness and dreaming of being African American, especially now that an African American is ruling the USA, that great imperial power.

The contempt for our indigenous Afrikaans culture, literature, cuisine, style and our very names have never been greater. Britain never changed the Voortrekker name of Pretoria, yet the black colonialists – who are also sadists – relish in humiliating us daily with their colonial folly of “Tshwane” which is about as foreign to South Africa as the Cyrillic alphabet.

South Africa is being pillaged by these colonialists who enslave and exploit us, confiscating our resources to finance their colonial lifestyle in ludicrous Italianate mansions.

Colonialism and imperialism are destroying us, both materially and spiritually. Our country is in dire need of national liberation. The first step is to liberate our minds of the rubbish that passes for the dominant ideology, justifying the land grabs and exploitation.

This piece also appeared as a letter in Business Day.

Shares in farms a smoke-screen for expropriation

plaasThe issue of proposed shares for farmworkers is a thinly disguised attempt by government to expropriate farms and could allow the uncertainty amongst South African farmers about their future to reach crisis levels, Mr. Pieter Groenewald, the Freedom Front Plus’ parliamentary spokesperson on Rural Development and Land Reform, said.

Mr. Groenewald said the proposals contained in a policy document of the department of Rural Development and Land Reform about the voluntary issuing of shares to farmworkers, boils down to nothing less than brutal expropriation of land, similar to that which took place in Zimbabwe.

According to Mr. Groenewald the document is making waves in agricultural circles and the proposals have been met with great concern.

One of the proposals in the document is that a person with ten year service is entitled to 10% shares for 50 years. The document does not at all make mention of what would happen if workers eventually hold the majority of the shares in a farm.

The document also mentions that it intends to reverse a wide range of uncertainties regarding property rights which were brought about by land expropriation, humiliation and exploitation of people.

Mr. Groenewald said the proposals are frightening and could cause enormous harm to South Africa’s agriculture as it could lead to large scale disinvestment.

“What will happen if a farmer has four workers who worked on his farm for 25 years each? Will that mean that they could take over ownership without compensation and the farmer has to seek another livelihood?

“South Africans and the world should open their eyes now about the ANC government’s plans with land ownership in South Africa.

“It is clear that the land reform program is a miserable failure and other plans are now being made to expropriate land from farmers without compensating them,” Groenewald said.