The South African government has begun the process of seizing white-owned farmland, reportedly filing legal papers seeking to expropriate two farms for one-tenth of their estimated value.
The filings, involving two game farms in the northern province of Limpopo, come as the African National Congress government is seeking to amend the country’s constitution to allow outright seizures of land with no compensation. The ANC’s leader also has recently argued that pure expropriation is allowed anyway now “in the public interest.”
According to the local City Press in South Africa, the Akkerland Boerdery wants 200 million Rand for the two pieces of land (about $13.8 million), as it had been assessed in 2011.
But the government wants to take it for 20 million, without the benefit of a court’s judgment of the land’s value — something supposedly legally guaranteed.
It will be interesting if they can defeat the courts. The laws give you the right to own land. Can a law that takes away the land without compensation ( or little compensation) hold.
What i am wondering is havent these guys seen whats happened to Zimbabwe when they tried to pull off the same policies or have they come up with a way to implement this that will actually work?
The test comes when few years down the line they have either mismanaged it or the locals have benefited from it or as seen in Zimbabwe, the politicians shared it amongst themselves.
Ramaphosa has not choice but to see through this land repossession excise. If he doesn’t do it peacefully, systematically the people will do it suddenly and by force. Also when he launched his takeover against former President Zuma, ANC party members gave this condition as make it or break it. It was the only way he could prove that he is not the rumoured white favoured candidate to take back the seat through proxy. The support from Zulu was very important to remove one of their own.
ANC is taking this populace route to avoid handing over the initiative to Malema’s party. Without a commitment to land seizures ANC risks losing its traditional strongholds esp KZN
This is the end of South Africa then.
Those White farmers have places to go;Southwest Russia and Australia.
The expropriated farms will fail.Like 90% of the farms that the South African Government actually bought from White farmers, tried to train the black farmers, gave them interest free loans to develop the farms and still 90% failed. The African attitude of wanting quick money instead of being patient like Delamere was in developing his farm is clearly not an African thing.
South Africa already has a junk credit rating and business confidence rating which had risen when Ramaphosa came to power is now back to the Jacob Zuma era levels.
Oh well!!
Maybe if we lowered our electricity tarrifs further to 5 bob per unit for Industrial , akina Volkwagen and Toyota would start manufacturing and not just assembling here and move their equipment from South Africa and also akina Mercedes and BMW can set up operations here because I see South Africa facing a Rand Crisis like Turkey is facing with its Lira after 12% of Turkish millionaires moved thieir money to Europe because…Edrogan.If Uhuru was smart, we would leech off South Africa’s current and soon to come misery
It will be interesting to see what will happen 1 or 2 years down the line.
If we were to look at the situation without political considerations, it would probably be best to leave productive farms in their current state but tax them very heavily (yani like 90% ) and use this to possibly open new farms in areas that are not being used and settle people there or use the money in some other endeavours that could help the people. All unproductive farms are to be redistributed.
This would probably be an ideal. But ubaya ni politics has to be taken into consideration and we all know how emotive an issue land is in Africa
The fight for independence in Africa was all about land ownership.
White people came with their bibles and guns and forcefully took control of black people’s lands. I cannot fault black South Africans wanting their lands back. If the white farmers don’t wish to stay in SA because the lands they stole were returned to the rightful owners then they are free to relocate to Australia or go back to Holland.
Farming is something that anybody can learn to do and therefore black South Africans can learn how to farm. That lie that white farmers have monopoly in farming intelligence is stupidity of the worst kind.
This second liberation of Africa will see black Africans getting possession of all their natural resources once and for all.
Yes but his land reform crusade is.
…after he is done Zuma or other Zulu political allies will hop into a new party and contest next yr. Already several parties have been formed and are already being linked to Zuma.
They’re more likely to go to Egypt or Ethiopia. Our installed capacity is too tiny to make manufacturing cheap compared to SAs 40GW. Plus most of the new power projects are renewable plants whose power can’t be dispatched. If we invest in coal/nuclear or larger geothermal plants it is possible.
South Africa has huge quantities of very valuable natural resources. Gold, silver, platinum etc. In my opinion the global white leaders will not destroy South Africa because of a few farming acres. The wealth they generate from the mines dwarfs the wealth a few white farmers generate from farming.
Besides if they attempt to destroy South Africa like they did Zimbabwe (by imposing crushing economic sanctions) they will have no sympathizers in Africa.
It’s going to be interesting how they deal with this SA. I respect Julius Malema.
Even here in Kenya Waititu is asking people to consider bending the laws that protecr riparian and public land.With demolition stopped am sure something is cooking