SA urged to seize white farms
by James Mombe Thursday 16 June 2011
JOHANNESBURG – South Africa must seize white-owned farmland without paying
compensation, ruling ANC party youth leader Julius Malema has said.
Malema, whose youth league does not determine policy but is one of the most
influential voices in the ANC, said the government’s preferred willing
buyer/willing seller policy has failed to ensure transfer of enough land to
the country’s land hungry blacks.
“Willing-buyer, willing-seller is not an alternative… The alternative from
the youth league is that we take the land without paying. That is what we
are proposing,” said Malema, who was speaking ahead of the league’s 24th
national congress that began today in Midrand just outside Johannesburg.
Under the willing buyer/willing seller policy the government pays market
prices for land voluntarily offered on the market.
But Malema queried why black South African should pay for land that was
originally stolen from them, echoing the argument of neighbouring Zimbabwe’s
President Robert Mugabe who has refused to pay for land grabbed from whites
saying it was stolen from black Zimbabweans in the first place.
“They never bought the land, they stole the land. They did not only steal
the land, they converted the owners of the land into slaves … now we must
pay for that with the willing-buyer, willing-seller,” said Malema.
There was no immediate reaction from the main ANC wing to Malema’s calls for
land seizures. But the President Jacob Zuma and other senior ANC leaders
have previously not backed the vocal youth leader’s radical positions on
land reform or the nationalisation of mines that he has also called for.
Thousands of poor blacks are still waiting for the ANC government to deliver
on its promise on coming to power in 1994 when it set itself an ambitious
target of redistributing 30 percent of all agricultural land to the black
majority by 2014.
With four years before the delivery date the South African government has
acquired only about four percent of land from private owners for
redistribution, and says it needs to accelerate the process amid growing
unrest among the poor landless blacks.
South Africa – just like its northern neighbour Zimbabwe – inherited an
unjust land tenure system from previous white-controlled governments under
which the bulk of the best arable land was reserved for whites while blacks
were forced to crowd on mostly arid and infertile soils.
But South Africa, which has Africa’s biggest farming sectors and its biggest
economy, has repeatedly said it will not follow the example of Zimbabwe
where Mugabe has confiscated most of the farms owned by that country’s about
4 500 white commercial farmers and gave them over to blacks.
The farm seizures are blamed for plunging Zimbabwe — once a net food
exporter — into severe food shortages since 2001 after black peasant farmers
resettled on former white farms failed to maintain production because the
government failed to support them with financial resources, inputs and
skills training. — ZimOnline.