Ndugu Mitayo,
Thanks for this. It is a racist white supremacist myth that Africans
cannot farm. The second myth is that somehow a willing-seller,
willing-buyer conditionality will transform the apartheid-era land
tenure system. Zimbabwe is where it is today, in large part because
Mugabe, Zanu-pf, and the newly minted Black elite bought that bullshit
while the global apartheid system happily ran the clock.
Here is the real deal. Until economic and social justice reigns in
Africa, all we're doing is postponing future wars of liberation. What is
more, wherever they live, Black people must own the land and other means
of production and wealth commensurate with their population size.
Nothing less.
If we Africans go to sleep over this issue, we are going the way of the
native Americans. We have resisted for more than 500 years, but our
immunity to diseases and to pernicious ideas (mental slavery) has been
so thoroughly compromised that if HIV/AIDS doesn't do the trick, future
epidemics and catastrophes will.
**Vukoni**
***http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1052-2352011.html
<javascript:ol('http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,1052-2352011.html');>
***
***South Africa's bitter harvest* **
***Opinion - William Rees-Mogg*******
***The Times, September 11, 2006***
***/A forced takeover of white farms threatens to bring economic ruin
and hunger to a land of plenty/***
**THERE ARE two ways of looking at the historic problems of land
ownership. One is the traditional way of seeking justice for the
original owners, often through land reform. This often has its own
problems, since it is sometimes impossible to establish who were the
original owners; there may be several competing claims. The
alternative is to give preference to those who will use the land to
produce the most food, most efficiently. **
**In Africa, the historic approach is favoured by the black majority
who often believe that their tribal lands were stolen by white
farmers. The white farmers naturally advance the productivity
argument; they regard farming as a large-scale scientific business
requiring capital and highly trained skills. It is a conflict between
traditional rights and the modern economy.**
**These two attitudes are to be found wherever there is an historic
dispute over land ownership. In Africa it may be black versus white,
but land disputes arise all over the world, including Europe. I am
sure there are Roman Catholic farmers in Ireland who still resent the
expropriation of their ancestral lands by English Protestants in the
16th or 17th centuries. Such injustices can rankle over many
generations. Human beings have a territorial instinct and will fight
to defend their territory as fiercely as robins. **
**Southern Africa is at present the global focus of this contest. In
Zimbabwe, President Mugabe has seized the white farms, driving out
many of the farmers by brute force. Despite some pretence of legality,
these have been illegal takeovers. The consequence has been that
Zimbabwe has ceased to be a net exporter of food and has become
dependent on international food aid. This collapse of food production
has wrecked the whole economy. Mugabe has been a disastrous leader,
and is seen by the non-African world as an incompetent dictator. To
many Africans he is still a hero, asserting the black people’s rights
to reclaim their ancestral land.**
**Last month Lulu Xingwana, the South African Minister for Agriculture
and Land Affairs, made an important declaration of policy. Of course,
the new policy must have been approved, perhaps initiated, by
President Mbeki. Ms Xingwana was speaking at a rally in Limpopo
province, in the main farming region of South Africa. The African
National Congress had always been committed to returning white-owned
farms to black claimants under the Black Economic Empowerment
programme; so far only 4 per cent of the land has been transferred.
Now Ms Xingwana has put an official time limit on the process. She
says vehemently that it must be redistributed completely by December
2008; black farmers will have the right to buy out the existing white
farmers. **
**“We will no longer waste time negotiating with people who refuse to
see the transformation of our country . . . from now on we will only
negotiate for six months and, if all fails, expropriation will take
place.” **
**In Limpopo province, black claimants have already launched their
claims for the return of 99.8 per cent of the farmland. Many white
farming families have enjoyed ownership for several generations. Even
the black claims that are based on the undoubted injustices of the
apartheid system may now be 50 years old; other claims for the
colonial period would be even older. Claims may be based on tribal
rather than individual ownership.**
**The South African Government is anxious to avoid the comparison with
Zimbabwe. Ms Xingwana has also said that expropriation will be the
last resort. Ministries have established a programme for joint
ventures, under which land coming into black ownership could be run in
partnership with existing white farming enterprises, if they chose to
do it. **
**The stakes are very high. South Africa is much better governed than
Zimbabwe, it is true, but South Africa is also far more important than
Zimbabwe; it is the dominant economy of Southern Africa. Some 95 per
cent of South African food production comes from the 45,000 white
farms that employ half the agricultural workers. Only the remaining 5
per cent of food is said to be produced by the 740,000 black workers
on black farms. The white sector operates at the level of modern
efficiency of the global economy. Most of the black sector is devoted
to traditional subsistent farming. One can go into any British
supermarket and find South African food on sale. It is mainly food
from white farms that competes in the global food market. **
**Modern farming requires large capital for equipment, for bulk seed
supplies, for marketing. The black farm sector does not have this
capital. Modern farming also requires management skills and trained
workers, in which the black sector is deficient. There is a very wide
gap between the productivity of the two sectors. **
**In Zimbabwe, forced and often violent takeovers of white farms led
to a disastrous collapse of farm production. In South Africa a legal
process of takeover under a democracy might lead to less disastrous
results, but would still replace high-productivity white farming with
the lower productivity of black farming. At best, the Government of
South Africa would have a hard struggle to limit the damage done by
its own land policy. **
**The timetable seems to be much too short for such a large-scale
farming revolution and the objectives seem much too ambitious. This is
not a question of racial capacities, but of farming productivity. If
expropriation is completed by 2008 one expert considers that by 2009:
“South Africa will no longer to be able to feed itself nor assist
Southern Africa.” That would be a humanitarian tragedy. South Africa
needs the white farmers who are an essential and efficient part of the
national economy — indeed, they contribute to feeding the whole of
Southern Africa. The main victims of this policy would be those poor
blacks whom it is supposed to benefit.**
** **
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