Imagine a situation in which the
Government of the United States, or of the European Union, passed a binding law
requiring that the land owned by the farmers be ‘redistributed’ to the poor, a
term which they defined by implication as the voters for the ruling Party. The logic behind the law was that a human was
not complete without ownership of the land.
Huge amounts of money would be applied to the purchase of the land in
the first few years, then, when the farmers who remained on the land indicated
that they were reluctant to sell their farms, the next law was passed, giving
the Government the right to expropriate the land, paying an amount of
compensation decided by a Committee consisting of Government supporters. The farmers then fought the law in Court,
claiming that it was contrary to the Constitution and damaging to the food
security of the country, as 90% of the farms that had been ‘redistributed’ until
then had failed. The Government then retaliated
by passing another law requiring the farmers to transfer 50% of their farms to
the workers on the farms, an amount of compensation being paid into a fund ‘for
the betterment of the farm workers’.
Impossible? An insane thesis? Economic catastrophe in the making? A Government losing grasp of reality?
Of course. No sane person in the Western world would
support such moves. Every sane voter
would vote that Government out of power at the next election, if they survived
that long. Except that exactly this
process is under way in South Africa today.
The State President has been seen in fawning admiration of Robert
Mugabe, last year the President of the African Union, and is following the
examples this man has set, including the land redistribution policy.
The land redistribution policy of
Robert Mugabe took place, and the collapse of that economy followed, as surely
as night follows day. The world saw it
happen, saw the White farmers being removed by teenage thugs who claimed to be ‘military
veterans’ of the ‘struggle for freedom’, even though most of them had not been
born at the time, and even though it was clear that the land grab was done to
benefit the cronies of the insane dictator of that land. The competent farmers, who had produced the
food that kept so many of the newly independent African countries fed, were
thrown off the land that they and their forefathers had developed from bare
veld over many years and with huge effort, often being beaten or killed in the
process, along with their faithful workers, who knew that the new owners would
not employ them to farm. Agriculture, a
mainstay of the Zimbabwe economy, crashed, and the West had to provide food aid
to the starving citizens of this ‘new democratic economy’. Mugabe refused to allow the grain to be
imported in bags emblazoned with the notice “A Gift of the American People –
Not for Resale”, and supplied his own bags to the company receiving the bulk
grain in Durban. The anonymous bags were
then transported to depots nominated by Mugabe, and sold to his Party
supporters, care being taken to prevent any of this vital food aid reaching
Opposition supporting areas. Thousands
of Zimbabweans starved or fled as penniless refugees, and Mugabe grew wealthy
on the back of the largesse of the American people, while his people descended
into penury.
The example is clear, and no
European or American would tolerate the introduction of such a policy in their
own countries. They all know that the
worth of a person cannot be related to his ownership of land. Why do they permit it in other countries?
South Africa is presently engaged
in the redistribution of land in exactly the way described. The Government has supported the process of
killing White farmers since 1994, with an average of 1 500 farmers being
killed each year, five per day! The Government
has disbanded the Rural Policing Units, designed to protect farmers against
crime, and the Police have changed the reporting of crimes against farmers to
hide the fact that they are being slaughtered wholesale. A report was prepared on the farm killings
and handed to the State President, who responded by saying, “I can do nothing
with this. Rewrite the report to state
that the killings are not politically motivated, but simply random crime.” The result has been that the number of
farmers has declined from 64 000 in 1994, when the ANC Government came to
power, to 24 000 today. Huge tracts
of fertile land lie fallow. Hundreds of
previously active farms, redistributed to inexperienced and unmotivated Black
farmers (who have no skin in the game to drive them to better efforts) and are
no longer producing. The Government is
in the process of passing a law to prevent ownership of land by foreigners,
giving them instead the possibility of leasing the land, claiming that the land
must belong to the people of South Africa.
They are not able to answer the question “how will that benefit South
Africa or its citizens?”, deflecting the question by claiming that it cannot
allow the decision of whether or not to produce crops to be in the hands of
foreigners! Of course, they have no
knowledge of the process called ‘law’, as used almost everywhere else.
The policy of land redistribution
is an act of unreasoned and unreasoning populist insanity, with the sure
outcome that South Africa will become the begging recipient of food aid from
the West. Is this what the people of
Europe and the United States want? Is
this what they would want in their own countries?
In the interests of sanity, it is
the duty of every thinking person everywhere to warn the Government of South
Africa that the path they are on now will surely lead to the collapse of the
South African economy, and to the death by starvation of millions of its
people. Unless, of course, the ANC and
its favorites are able to pull off the diversion of the food aid to be provided
by the West, distributing it, at a large profit, through its own trading
entities to the faithful voters, to be paid for out of the Social Grants it
will make available from Government coffers for the purpose, and claiming the
glory of providing food to the citizens.
If you are reading this and have
any interest in keeping the people of South Africa from falling into the pit of
starvation occupied by so many other independent African countries, spread the
word now.
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