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| Africa: Subsaharan | |
| SA proposes quicker | |
| 2005-07-27 | |
| South Africa needs to revise its approach to land reform to end racial inequalities, government officials say. At a national land summit in Johannesburg, Deputy President Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka said the current market-based approach was not working. Landless people's activists remained sceptical about the announcement. Eighty per cent of agricultural land is owned by white South Africans, who make up only 10% of the population - the legacy of apartheid laws. Since coming to power in 1994, the current government has adopted a "willing buyer, willing seller" approach to land redistribution, paying market prices for land that white owners are prepared to sell, and then distributing it to landless blacks. "The pace of reform has been negatively influenced by the willing buyer, willing seller approach, Ms Mlambo-Ngcuka told the meeting. "Markets don't have mechanisms to redistribute land for the poor." Asked whether this would require new legislation, Land and Agriculture Minister Thoko Didiza told the BBC: "This will be decided by the outcome of the summit." The Landless People's Movement (LPM), which has been campaigning for government to speed up land reform, seemed sceptical about the government's proposals. "It is one thing to say it, and another to implement it," said Randall Rossouw, an activist from Western Cape province. The LPM staged a protest march to the conference venue, calling for an end to the willing buyer willing seller approach. Minister Didiza said that by 2014, the government will have been able to deliver 30% of agricultural land to the black majority. So far, only 4% of land has been acquired by the government from private owners for redistribution purposes, and unused state land has also been redistributed. The land summit - which brings together politicians, landowners and organisations representing people who hope to benefit from land reform - will discuss ways of speeding up the redistribution process. White farmers are concerned that changes could create an atmosphere conducive for land grabs, similar to the land invasions seen on white-owned farms in Zimbabwe.
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| Posted by:Steve |
| #17 I work with a bunch of people from SA, Namibia, Zimbobwae and Swaziland. Most have been in in the US for about 5 years. They know exactly whats coming. None are US citizens yet but all have applied, they go back to SA on average once a year. The SAer's all say they thought apartheid was awful but the only way to maintain "civilization". There is quite a bit of white flight out of there, street crime is out of control, social services are overburdened to the point of being ineffective. And they all pray that the dismantaling of their nuke program was for real, they equate an South African Nuke in control of the ruling party there as the same as giving a 4 year old a loaded magnum.. |
| Posted by: JerseyMike 2005-07-27 15:26 |
| #16 Ship - Nope - never seen that one. Dunno fi it's worth popping for a scanner, tho, lol! |
| Posted by: .com 2005-07-27 15:05 |
| #15 .com have you a copy of Hendras (I think) food scuplture.... Meat Lie the Shame of a Nation? I have hardcopy stashed somewhere..... time for a new scanner maybe |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-07-27 15:01 |
| #14 several of ZimBobLand's neighbors have welcomed teh black and white farmers that fled Bob's "cultural growth". Seems the neighbors like to eat, and even, lo and behold! Export food for $ |
| Posted by: Frank G 2005-07-27 13:49 |
| #13 And don't be forgetin dem war veterans when ya be reformin dat land. Make sure ya throws in a whitey to do da plantin. As I find out the hard way dat shit don't grow itself. |
| Posted by: Farmin B. Hard: Zimbabwean War Veteran 2005-07-27 13:31 |
| #12 Bigjim - Land that is to be "reformed" has little market value. Lots of whites have already left SA. There is a labor shortage over there for skilled people as a result. |
| Posted by: buwaya 2005-07-27 13:25 |
| #11 BigJim, Zimbabwe was once one of the most productive agricultural societies anywhere, and was referred to as the breadbasket of Southern Africa. But Big Bob took the farms and drove those with the years of experience away. Now some of those African farming experts are showing up in other countries, I think Botswana is one, and they are starting to drastically improve the agricultural output there. Note that the people with this expertise are both white and black. The former black managers and senior staff of these farms have years of knowledge. I'm sure the situation is the same in SA. The key is to not drive this knowledge away as it cannot be replaced. |
| Posted by: remoteman 2005-07-27 13:25 |
| #10 "Two wrongs Dont make a Right" But three do. -Tony Hendra, Deteriorata |
| Posted by: .com 2005-07-27 13:12 |
| #9 And while I'm bitching about africa, didn't Zimbabwe have sizeable exports of food before the big land grabs? Now they need emergency food for how many millions of people? |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2005-07-27 13:09 |
| #8 Whites in africa would have no problem getting foreign passports. If they are owners of sizeable farms that tells me they have money. If you have money, nearly any country in the world will open its arms to you. It's the refuges and asylum seekers that come and mooch off the welfare systems that nobody wants. |
| Posted by: bigjim-ky 2005-07-27 13:07 |
| #7 Not to mention Zimbabwae had a very small white population and no one really believed what was happening was going to happen. I garantee when they kick up the land grab in S. Africa the whites there are alot more organized and determined. They wont go without a fight and it will be bloody. And when it comes to that the old time race baiters will have a real racist problem to deal with and thier wont be a easy fix. |
| Posted by: C-Low 2005-07-27 12:38 |
| #6 Great Idea worked so well for Zimbabwae. I wonder how long it will take the SA to reconlonize thier country with the Chineese owners like Zimbabwae is having to do now. What is so stupid about this whole PC world today is the fact that people for generations have moved and changed location. Just because whites live today were blacks used to or whatever senerio you want to play dont mean sh*t. People move around. I wonder how long before this new PC world is going to decide to relocate all of the people of the earth to some X date in history who knows whos next Australia after all the Aborigines were thier first or maybe America ya know the indians were here first or hell maybe America should go to the Chineese they say they were the first to cross the land bridge?? hmmm The fact of the matter is that if we are supposed to live in a non-racial world the fact that 80% of the farms are white owned should not matter as long as it is free market and they continue to produce. You cant claim to be ending racism with more racism in the opposite form that is stupid because then what does todays racism victims children in the future get to impose racism on todays racism benefactors children and so on and so on at some point it just has to stop. Two wrongs Dont make a Right |
| Posted by: C-Low 2005-07-27 12:28 |
| #5 The only poor people who should get land should be in tightly controlled cooperatives, managed by those who know agribusiness. Just giving people land who have no idea of how to use it properly is useless, as is distribution to small scale farms that lack economy of size. A cooperative "board" would be the managers, who spend all of their time learning the proper management of the cooperative, under the expert, while the workers they manage are paid laborers. Once a board member is certified as an expert, he becomes the head of a new cooperative and a new board of trainee managers. This "reproductive" system multiplies the number of trained manager operated cooperatives while at the same time employing a large number of workers. From their first harvest, every cooperative is a money-maker, a portion of whose profits are used to obtain the land for subsequent cooperatives. |
| Posted by: Anonymoose 2005-07-27 12:08 |
| #4 AlanC: white flight is going to be a real problem, for a simple reason -- most whites in South Africa have nowhere to go. Some of the English-speaking whites qualify for British passports, but most of the Afrikaaners have ancestors who came to the Cape before the Zulus and Xhosas arrived. No country in the world is going to give them passports. If Mbeki really wants to wreck SA, this is how he'll do it. A reasonable compromise would be for the government to buy agricultural land at market prices and distribute to the landless, but I don't see the |
| Posted by: Steve White 2005-07-27 12:05 |
| #3 They want to duplicate the success of Zimbob? (Seems Rhodesia worked much better for all..) What's with these death and destruction role models. Why are they atractive? Why do the idiots still believe in FREE LUNCH? |
| Posted by: 3dc 2005-07-27 11:32 |
| #2 Dunno how big, but I'm pretty sure there is. Heck, given the way their government's been, I wouldn't be surprised to see the Zulus leaving in droves. |
| Posted by: Robert Crawford 2005-07-27 09:59 |
| #1 Anybody know if there's a white flight problem in SA? If there isn't, this just may cause one. |
| Posted by: AlanC 2005-07-27 09:57 |
