Posted on 06/22/2002 2:05:41 AM PDT by Clive
Harare - About 2 900 white-owned farms in Zimbabwe must stop operating on Monday under a new law to pave the way for the government's land redistribution exercise, a farmers' union spokesperson said on Friday.
The farmers represent about 60 percent of the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) members who held about 4 813 title deeds before the land reforms began in 2000.
They would have to stop running their farms by Monday under a new law, spokesperson Jenni Williams said.
On May 10 the government passed new legislation under which a farmer whose property has been earmarked for acquisition stops farming 45 days after the notice of acquisition has been issued and vacates the property within 90 days.
According to the CFU, the 2 900 farmers had been notified by the government before May 10 of the intention to acquire their property. Therefore the 45-day notice period to stop farming came into effect from the day the law was passed.
Farmers who ignore the time limit commit an offence liable to two years in jail or a Z$20 000 (about R3 720) fine or both.
Some tobacco farmers who had made a special application to the government to continue farming until the end of next season early next year, had their request turned down, according to the state-run Herald newspaper Friday.
The government rejected the request saying it would not act outside the law, and accused white farmers of trying to derail the land reform programme.
"There will be no extra judicial waiver or suspension of Section 8 Orders (notices to acquire farms). The land reform is real and irreversible. Therefore the law will take its full course," Information Minister Jonathan Moyo was quoted by The Herald as saying.
The CFU spokesperson said on Friday that, in addition to farmers who have to stop operations, an estimated 232 000 farmworkers would also have to stop working on Monday in line with the new law. - Sapa-AFP
I feel callous and jaded for just turning away, but literally, there is nothing the West or the USA can do for that country or the continent if this is the way their peoples choose to get on in the future. There is only South Africa left and after that the continent, especially the sub Saharan continent, is lost. If the Europeans seemed God-like when they showed up on the dark continent in the past, can you imagine how the West will seem to the chaotic mess and uneducated masses in Africa, 2-3 decades from now when we show up again to colonize?
The worst tragedy of all this is not the suffering of the present day African as terrible as it may be. The worst is that men of the likes of Mugabe and Kofi Anan are sentencing an entire continent of people to be forever serfs. When recolonization takes place in Africa, the West will be so technologically advanced that the average African will never, ever be able to catch up. The average Western citizen has trouble staying abreast of the change we experience when we are immersed in it. They, the Africans, will be perpetually left ever more centuries behind as the growth of the West reaches exponential levels. What have these people to offer us in the present moment? How much less will they have to offer us in 20 yrs or more?
However, if the children adopt the ways of the more technologically advanced Western world in that future history in order to survive and prosper, African culture by and large will become extinct. Of course, the current dictators are doing a fine job of making vicious, petty brutality the modern African culture.
I ran across this item from a lefty site called "One World.org". Check out the wording these people use- terms like "landless peoples" and this ominous passage:
...white farmers who continue to occupy 85 percent of the country's land to prevent poor black and landless people from exercising their rights to land, life, justice and dignity...
6/6/2002
National Land Committee and Landless People's Movement Press Statement
"Ermelo Six walk free.but apartheid remains in Ermelo"
The National Land Committee - a national network of 10 land rights civil society organisations working with poor and landless communities struggling to access land reform across South Africa - and the Landless People's Movement - an independent national movement of landless people demanding land reform - celebrate the freedom of the Ermelo Six following the State's dismissal of charges yesterday, but demand the urgent transformation of the apartheid rural injustice system that remains the order of Ermelo.
The Ermelo Six - including four LPM leaders and two NLC land activists - were among 100 people illegally arrested on 26 April, 2002 after the conclusion of a peaceful and legitimate march to the Department of Land Affairs to demand land and the transformation of the rural injustice system. The protesters were charged en masse with "illegal march and illegal gathering", despite having complied with the administrative requirements associated with the Constitutional right to Freedom of Assembly. Within an hour, the Ermelo Magistrate's Court had dismissed the charges against all but six of those arrested.
Yesterday, the State finally withdrew its charges against the remaining six, admitting that it had no case against the accused. In so doing, the State has implied its acceptance of the principle that the exercise of the fundamental Constitutional right to Freedom of Assembly as defined by the Regulation of Gatherings Act 205 of 1993 requires no more than the administrative notification of the relevant authorities - in other words that protesters are not required to obtain "permission" to exercise their right. This implied admission is an important victory for all South Africans attempting to exercise their right to protest in a democratic context but faced with apartheid-era interpretations of this right by police and other officials.
The NLC and LPM welcome the State's decision, but condemn the ignorant and racist abuse of power by the rural injustice system which allowed the arrests to be effected and the case to be pursued. The Ermelo Six travelled long distances to appear in court three times on these malicious charges, but were never even asked to plead before the charges were dismissed - making the case a clear attempt by the Ermelo rural injustice system to impose a burden on those daring to challenge the apartheid order in the town.
Racist utterances by the handful of white police who effectively run the Ermelo police station - despite the presence of a black station commander - and one prosecutor's decision to proceed with the case simply because the accused "knew too much about their rights" are just some of the indicators of the lack of transformation in this microcosm of rural South Africa.
Apartheid still lives in Ermelo - and throughout rural South Africa - as police, army commandos, prosecutors and magistrates conspire with the 60,000 white farmers who continue to occupy 85% of the country's land to prevent poor black and landless people from exercising their rights to land, life, justice and dignity.
The NLC and LPM demand the immediate resolution of the demands made by the landless people arrested in Ermelo on the 26 April. They are:
1) That every land claimant in our march receives individual attention today from the Ermelo DLA office, including the opening of our files and an immediate response on the status of each of our claims;
2) That the government must take back the land that is unused, underutilized, and unproductive; as well as the land of abusive, indebted or absentee land owners. If the government does not do this, we will have to do it ourselves. If the government does not know where such land is, they can ask us and we will gladly tell them;
3) That the government must specifically take back the land which has been turned into game reserves - and from which people have been evicted to make way for animals - because this land is unproductive;
4) That the government must immediately stop all evictions and make all evictions illegal (impose a moratorium on evictions) until a proper Land Summit is held as agreed to in Durban in November 2001 at the Land Tenure Conference;
5) That the United Nations launches an investigation into gross human rights violations on farms in our region in particular and across South Africa as a follow up to the Human Rights Watch report of 2001;
6) That the laws affecting landless people, including the Extension of Security of Tenure Act, the Land Reform (Labour Tenants) Act and the property rights clause of the Constitution are urgently reviewed in consultation with the landless. This review cannot be done by bureaucrats in Pretoria - the government must come down to the people to find out what is needed;
7) That the commando system inherited from apartheid is immediately abolished and private security companies replaced by a fair and effective police service which serves the whole community - not just the white farmers;
8) That Operation Gijimatsotsi must be replaced by an investigation of farm abuses by the Scorpions who have the power to investigate the role of the police and to take back the property of criminal farm abusers;
9) That the Department of Land Affairs must take responsibility for ensuring that our demands are met, including those demands that involve other departments, in terms of the principle of "cooperative governance".
ISSUED BY: The National Land Committee and Landless People's Movement on 6 June, 2002
JanL and I have discussed this and I think that we both expect that South Africa will follow Zim's example within a decade.
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