Posted on 09/22/2005 11:51:32 AM PDT by NormsRevenge
PRETORIA, South Africa - South Africa's government is for the first time moving to seize land from a white farmer, saying Thursday that negotiations to buy the property to hand over to black claimants were taking too long.
Blessing Mphela, a land restitution commissioner, said at a news conference that the seizure was a last resort, but he added that land transfers to redress the abuses of the apartheid era must speed up.
The government has repeatedly said it would rely on negotiated sales to shift agricultural land ownership rather than emulate Zimbabwe's seizures of white-owned farms, which many experts say contributed to the collapse of that country's economy.
But Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's policies have made him hugely popular among black South Africans as land transfers lag here — which the government blames on white farmers demanding overly high prices and dragging out sales.
When South Africa's democratic government came to power in 1994, some 87 percent of farm land was owned by whites, who account for just 10 percent of the population. Whites still own about 80 percent, according to some estimates.
Mphela is an official on the Commission on the Restitution of Land Rights, which was set up to return land that black and mixed-race families lost during white rule.
"In South Africa, where dispossession of African people was much more brutal and thorough than any other in the region, the fruits of liberation have yet to be tasted by the majority of the rural population," he said.
A spokesman for Mphela, Congress Mahlangu, told The Associated Press that the case announced Thursday is the first time the commission has resorted to expropriation.
Mphela, who is in charge of restitution cases in North West Province, said the government would issue an expropriation order for a 1,235-acre farm owned by Hannes Visser. The government offered $276,000, while Visser sought $473,000.
Visser told the South African Press Association he would challenge the order.
"I do not recognize the claim on my land and cannot be forced to sell at the government's price," he said.
Mahlangu said Visser would receive the expropriation order within a week. Mphela said Visser then would have a month to appeal to the minister of agriculture. If the minister upheld the order, Visser could appeal in the courts.
Visser said he made about $550,000 worth of improvements to the farm that his father bought in 1968. He said the government's offer was not enough for him to set up a business comparable to the farm.
Mphela said the farm was once part of four parcels owned by the Molamu family, which was forced to sell under the apartheid government's policy of systematically stripping blacks of land and moving them into townships and "homelands." Descendants of the Molamus filed a claim seeking restitution.
"Two-thirds of the country, including most of the best-quality land, remains in the hands of less than 60,000 people, who unfortunately in this case are white farmers, while 14 million blacks or Africans eke out a precarious existence in the former homelands and urban informal settlements," Mphela said.
"the fruits of liberation have yet to be tasted by the majority of the rural population," he said."
If they take farms from the whites they won't be tasting food either.
Kinda sounds like Hitlery.
Nam Vet
Of course the USA taxpayer will pony up the $$$$ when disease and famine hit yet another African crap hole
If she's lected Prez with a lot of black support how long before the reparation games begin here?
Let me be the first to flame. Had this happened to anyone recently (read as in this lifetime) I would see the point in returning it to it's rightful owner. As he bought the farm from his father in the 60's, this is closer to the slave reparations issue in the US. I see no logic in forcing an individual to make rearations for admittedly wrongful actions of a governing body and a policy long gone by.
Mphela said the farm was once part of four parcels owned by the Molamu family, which was forced to sell under the apartheid government's policy of systematically stripping blacks of land and moving them into townships and "homelands." Descendants of the Molamus filed a claim seeking restitution.
Now their descendants are reclaiming the land. That's something we should support.
I don't disagree, but:
1. They should pay a fair price.
2. We all know where this is going. Eventually they will just start taking every white person's land.
The 60's were in this lifetime, at least for a great many of us.
Suppose your property is taken from you and given to another person. Then that other person "sells" it to his son (wink, wink). I'd say you're justified in reclaiming it.
The type of reparations that we should oppose are when one "group" takes from another "group" with no legal basis.
But this case is one of individuals making a claim to property their family owned. This is closer to fighting eminent domain abuse.
I wonder where people here would stand if the Molamus were
white?
I think its salutory that the SA government is being scupulous in its dealings with the Vissers and would hope
that freepers would support justice without regard to the
race of the parties.
I think maybe people are comparing it to the situation in Zimbabwe. No one wants S.A. to become another Zimbabwe or to become another African nation rife with poverty.
I have no idea where S.A. is going... But this case alone seems justified.
That's why Communism must be better, since Communism has only three problems:
1.) Breakfast
2.) Lunch
3.) Dinner
;-)
"'Two-thirds of the country, including most of the best-quality land, remains in the hands of less than 60,000 people, who unfortunately in this case are white farmers, while 14 million blacks or Africans eke out a precarious existence in the former homelands and urban informal settlements,' Mphela said."
Translation: We will expropriate the land from the 60,000 productive citizens who feed us (and just happen to be white) and give it to a few political cronies who make up a small number of the 14 million blacks in this country. The lucky (black) party cronies will then make a lot of money by selling off plots to poor blacks. Within three years of expropriation and redistribution to black farmers, the country will be at the point of starvation since our black farmers will be no more productive than those of other subsaharan African countries. This we will blame on unremitting bad weather and the legacy of aparteid. We will then plead for world aid, primarily from white, oppressive, colonialist countries like the U.S.
But the white farmer should be fairly compensated. This is half what he asked for, and ignores improvement on the property that he made.
Do you understand the precedent? You cant take and under compensate. You start there, and theres no bottom. What happened in the past was done legally, if not morally, and if you want to start a huge white flight, just pretend that the only thing that make right, is might. That'll do it.
"S. Africa to take land from white farmer"
Just curious but does anyone know if this has happened in the USA??
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