S.Africa to seize land from white farmers

[NNN0LHI]

http://www.swissinfo.org/eng/international/ticker/detail/S_Africa_to_seize_land_from_white_farmers.html?siteSect=143&sid=7163978&cKey=1160816858000

EAST LONDON, South Africa (Reuters) - The South African government has issued new orders to seize land from a small number of white farmers who were not willing to settle apartheid-era land disputes with dispossessed blacks, the nation's agriculture and land affairs minister said.

Minister Lulu Xingwana has said her department would only hold price negotiations for six months with whites who own land taken from blacks during white minority rule. If talks failed, officials would take steps to seize the land.

She said wrangling over prices had in the past often taken years, frustrating officials who are under pressure to speed up the transfer of land to blacks in order to correct the skewed land ownership created under white rule.

"I must say, yes, the majority of white farmers have turned around and come to the table and are offering to sell land to support government restitution, but there are hard-nosed ones and we are dealing with that right now," she told reporters on Friday.

[wholetruth00]

1. Woould this be the same land that the white farmers seized from the

native S. Africans?

[malaise]

3. Bingo n/t

[DavidDvorkin]

5. Not necessarily

Large areas of South Africa had no human population when the whites arrived. Many farms were carved out of unpopulated wilderness.

[Leopolds Ghost]

7. According to Jared Diamond this is because the whites used different crops

They were able to settle temperate, uninhabited areas that were uninhabited only because the native Xhosa grew different crops.

The Xhosa and Zulu areas could not be successfully displaced because
winter wheat would not grow in the southeast of the country.

The Hottentot, who were a non-black African culture similar to the Bushmen, were exterminated because they lived on plains which were suitable for winter wheat.

Zimbabwe (Rhodesia), Malawi and Zambia also were set up for European-style farming, with relatively moderate climates, but few Europeans were able to go north of Zimbabwe because of rinderpest, which affected European farm animals. So only Zimbabwe, Keny and South Africa were colonized by whites.

The rest of South Africa was colonized by Zulus, who were hostile to both white "tribes" like the Afrikaners and non-white "tribes" like the Xhosa. That is why there is a balance of power in South Africa between the English, the Afrikaners, the Zulu and the Xhosa.

[ProgressiveEconomist]

8. "uninhabited areas ....The Hottentot ... were exterminated ..."

Which is it? Did the whites settle only uninhabited areas, or did they commit genocide against the Hottentots to get land suitable for the crops they wanted to farm?

[Igel]

10. Both, to some extent.

And one must remember than before the Zulu immigrated the "Hottentot" were the only ethnic group in S. Africa, and the colonizing Bantu drove them out, killed them, or in some rare instances assimilated them (NB: it's considered good form these days to call them Khoe, San, Khoi-Khoi, or Khoi-San, not "Hottentots"). It's considered very bad form to point out that before Europeans engaged in genocide in sub-Sahara Africa the Africans were already themselves well-versed in the "art".

The Bantu continue their genocide, to some extent, in Botswana. The San are in nature preserves, and its been determined by their Bantu rulers that they're too intrusive: the San must either stay put and live on the crap trucked in for them to eat, or leave their areas. Once out of their native area, their culture is simply unsuitable, and they tend to turn to alcohol, drugs, suicide, and their families and social structures collapse. The government points to Western "progressives" and their ideas about environmental preservation to justify this practice to the world (a subset of progressives are truly outraged by the entire practice).

Some areas, however, were "cleansed" by the Bantu before the whites arrived even if the Bantu didn't actually settle there in number. You engage in tribal warfare, you wipe out the opposing tribe if you can--otherwise they come back again and again and again. The Bantu had superior technology: iron, and agriculture with a decent starch-based food for population maintenance. Khoi-San were always hunter-gatherers, with opportunistic seeding, not settled agriculture.

Some areas were just sparsely inhabited. Hunter-gatherers aren't typically numerous.

Diverse habitat, diverse manners of colonialism.

[Poppyseedman]

2. Seizing land drives down the price of property

Xingwana's office has blamed white farmers for delaying the redistribution plan by demanding exorbitant prices for their property. Farmers say their rates are market-related

Most likely land prices have dropped because of land redistribution and these farmers are just asking what their property was worth.

If you know your property no matter how it was "obtained" will be no longer under your control, the value of it will naturally go down as the current property owners will not invest in it's upkeep.

[Jcrowley]

4. Wish those property values

would drop around here then maybe everyone could afford a house.

Strange times to think of land as having some hallucinatory value (fiat currency)

Only After The Last Tree Has Been Cut Down,
Only after The Last River Has Been Poisoned,
Only after The Last Fish Has Been Caught,
Only Then Will You Find That Money Cannot Be Eaten.

[Solo_in_MD]

6. Have they have learned nothing from Zimbabwe?

Equitable redress for historical wrongs is not without merit, but doing it in a way that means you people end up starving is cutting off your nose to spite your face. Mugabe has done just that in Zimbabwe. One would think that the SA government would have learned something from watching their neighbor self destruct.

[tabatha]

9. a few points

Zimbabwe did not try to negotiate with White farmers.

The part of the South Africa where crops could not be grown is only in the Cape - where the mediterranean climate and winter rainfall made the Bantu crops difficult to grow. This area is west of Grahamstown/Port Elizabeth. Areas to the east and north were settled by a number of different tribes and their land was to a great extent taken from them. There has to be some retribution and fairness. If some of the Whites do not negotiate in good faith, what else can be done.

I do not think that the situation in South Africa will become anything close to that of Zimbabwe.

[DavidDvorkin]

11. Does the equivalent apply to American farmers?

To all non-American-Indian farmers? Are they also to be forced -- because forced negotation is still foce -- to vacate their land?

At what point do the sins of the ancestors cease being visited upon their descendants?