SA govt plans revised farm takeover law

Then we can start importing food!!!!! Absolutely barmy!

Here we go everyone. Hold on tight.

Mooi River farmers have already suffered from the type of violence and lawlessness that this thinking engenders.

Zumbabwe her we come!

This is a good & serious initiative for many africans(those who owe their alligience to AFRICA).i think that we need to see this initiative in this light.We should be aming higher than 30%.We therefore need to audit these white owned farms so as to question the legitimacy of the way they were annaxed.Last but not least,STOP commodifying our land because this leaves our people without land & land without people.Even the lives of the poor are commodified because of of this cruel system which is profit driven & not people driven.Izwe Lethu!

Property rights in SA, theoretically protected by the Constitution, are worthless. Property rights are more entrenched in Zimbabwe's constitution and look what happened to the farmers there. Expect SA to fall further in international governance indices if this goes through.

And that land which is handed over is ..... now barren. Well done ANC, you returned it to the state it was pre 1800's

As in Zim, land stolen from whites will have to appease the robbed electorate when all other wealth has been shared out around the ANC trough. The voters won't even notice that this land ends up in the hands of the usual ANC suspects instead of the "landless" who wouldn't know what to do with it once all the tractors and implements have been sold or destroyed.

To seize land will be the best thing the government has ever done because the current illegal owners are not prepared to give it back to the rightful owners that were tortured for their land.

How was the 24 million hectares allocated arrived at again?

Kobus, the current owners of the land legally own that land according to the law of our country, so I can't really understand your point, they have legal title. You can change the laws ofcourse to suite your agenda, but you would have to sacrifice your integrity wouldn't you?

Kobus Botha: ex nay on the ropaganda pay.

There are no illegal land owners in South Africa. Im sure that its a common belief amongst the 'black panther communist youth league united front', that people were 'tortured' for their land.

But proof and evidence would be nice.

I think it's worth pointing out that there is relatively little clamor among the poor and hopeless for the restitution of land that belonged to some distant past, what every poverty stricken dispossessed South African wants is what everybody wants, work and income, housing, services, school for their kids ... The land issue is an emotive issue African nationalists are obsessed with more to do with history and their failures of the past and not with providing a "better life" for all South Africans which is what everybody really wants.

Would these people actually build farms, or take what has been built. From pastoral living to industrial agriculture. Zuma is such a non leader for the poor, it would be better for SA to ask Mugabe to run SA also as well as Zim, simultaneously. If the non-white population continues to explode, it is inevitable that the will take everything (and build what). Only an idiot like Mugabe could fool them that it is in their benefit if his wife gets the best farms, the guy that kills opposition the next best, etc. What other logic can the ANC have. Hire someone with experience. The decimation of the economy is less important than racial pride. No one pays attention that this is the rip-off by the few, shameful for using poverty to gloss over the lining of their own pockets. Hire Robert, don't mess around with half measures. To heck with the economy, we can emigrate to Zim if things get bad.

So, you force the unwilling hand of a white food-producer, grab his land, install a black subsistence farmer who scratches the dirt on only one hectare of his vast thousand hectare land allotment and leaves all the rest to revert back to unproductive parasite-riddled raw bush. But, as the policy-maker, you're ecstatically happy because the land -- however useless -- is now owned by a person with a black skin. If all that makes sense to you, you're simply an idiot and a racist. As mad and as racist as that ruinous tyrant across the Limpopo.

Economic nitwits. The lot of them.

I am no lawyer, but if the government is intending to acquire land and then redistribute it to landless BLACK South Africans; surely this action is prima facie unconstitutional. SA prides itself on its non-racial Constitution and therefore white, brown and polka dot people should also receiving property.

So, on what basis will it be redistributed? Who will choose and how? Who is eligible to receive? There is not enough land to go around anyway; and it is criminal to breakup economically viable land holdings into smaller parcels that are not.

These issues need to be addressed openly and transparently and with absolute equity. Otherwise I see another Zimbabwe ruins south of the border.

When three of the five articles in the ‘related article’ column refers to Zimbabwe you pretty much know what’s on the way…

Im just getting my R1 million to go buy a bread quickly!!!

I dont believe that land should just be handed over to anyone if they dont have a background in agriculture. If the land is not used productively, it should be expropriated and handed to someone who will

Subsidies and loans should be ganted, as was done for farmers pre '94. They were subsdised on everything, to the extent that every farmer drove a Mercedes vehicle, which was classed as farm implements, for which even the fuel was subsidised.

To those people who want to claim that all the land was held by title, and therefore was not stolen. Wake up out of your dreamstate. How was that titles aquired? Through theft, murder and lies! The proof is abundant, despite sustained attempts to eradicate and cover it up.
Do you think anyone ever believed the lies you tried to feed us, that our ancestors were as idiotic to sell their land, which was their very lifeblood, for a few baubles and cheap alcohol?

It was stolen, and then the very owners forced to work in abject slavery on the very land they were dispossesed from. Why do you think our forefathers fought all those wars against your forefathers?
Through their slaves labour your ancestors aquired their wealth, which you still hold today, which gives you the unfair advantage to this day.
So please, dont insult people and their intelligence!

It doesnt matter how long ago these thefts accurred. Theft is theft, and restoration needs to be done.

Anyone denying that we are really on the same path as Zim, should think again. My question is: what happened to the negotiated agreements reached at Codesa, regarding property rights. FW de Klerk was constantly referring to Checks & Balances. It is only recently I fully understood the meaning thereof. Check how the future government is going to scr*w you and how their bank Balances grow.

@ Kobus Botha. It is obvious from your posting that your water proof let you down last night.

If only our population were shrinking this would not be as troubling.

Why are you all saying Zibabwe,Zimbabwe? This is South Africa nd not Zibabwe.

It is beyond me how whites can profess their love for tis country, and in the same breath condemn its future, as akin to Zimbabwe.

Lets put it like this. The clock has come full circle. For hundreds of years you have been reaping the cream of this country. The time has now come for you to accept reality and be mature about it. You have alreay accumalated all the wealth and expertise,and its a forgone conclusion that the land will be redistributed, so why not use your wealth and expertise to assist the new farmers.

If not for the love of this country, and not to see it go the way of Zimbabwe, but there are still various spin-offs and supporting industries from agrculture, which is ecomically very viable, and where your expertise would put you in poll position to benefit.

Lets rather work together, than have a spoilt brat mentality of, "....if I cant have it, I will break it rather than let someone else have it...."

I am moving to Zim!!!!

I think the difficulty here is that early (pre-colonial) South Africans were mostly hunter-gatherers. Nomadic tribes, like those that still exist today in Mongolia and other parts of the world, tend not to put down roots or build permanent houses or cities/towns. The European settlers, on the other hand, left Europe because of the opportunities of land ownership offered to them by their imperial overlords. They brought with them the idea that land, cultivated over time and settled with permanent structures, requires ownership and written documents proving that ownership.

The one culture writes things down and builds structures, while the other is mostly oral and tends to move around. The current constitution is based on several Western models and follows the European tradition of demanding proof (in writing) of ownership. Therefore, any arguments of who stole what from whom are pretty useless without documents stating ownership. Arguing that one group has more 'right' to a piece of land than another group displays the worst kind of pre-modern thinking.

Can we do anything original and with success? Zim sets the example and we follow. I do not agree with the idee to seize farms that was build up by blood, sweat and tears.

well Paul, first thing, they are not new farmers. they are 'landless' people. big diffs.

@ Paul Carolus on October 9, 2009, 8:00 am.
Generalisations, disinformation, complete unsubstantiated statements, sweeping allegations, stereotyping and speculation and, in a lot of instances, a lack of general knowledge are evident in most postings. I have come to the conclusion that, for a very long time, people have been brainwashed, indoctrinated and showered with propaganda regarding the past. The lie has been become the truth. (never were so many, mislead by so few, over such along period of time – thanks Winston) I am truly amused that, with (obvious) access to the internet, where one can familiarize yourself with any aspect in the universe, people still assume, that their self righteousness opinions are the alpha and omega of any argument. Please rather spent time to familiarise yourself with the true facts. Google is a good place to start.

I recently visit the beautiful Magoebaskloof and I was shocked and appalled to see that the huge Pekoe tea estate which was handed over to the local community four or so years ago has fallen into complete disrepair. This was a very productive farm in a very fertile valley which is now going wild.

I believe that some form of land distribution process is in order. But one, forcibly taking farms is akin to stealing and is wrong, and secondly I would like to see the new landowners property trained in agriculture before they take control of the land, and then monitored and supported to ensure the land remains productive.

400 years ago our country was wild and land was not much more than just a patch on the ground. But now we need farms to keep us fed, to bring in foreign revenue, and to provide millions of jobs. I would urge the government to approach very cautiously!

Phew! This is such an emotional issue and one that will not just go away! If this law is passed, it will have serious repurcussions on the entire economy. The whole land redistribution program is flawed and is run by an incompetant department. You can't just take productive land from farmers (who bought it) and hand to people who don't have a clue how to farm! It is a recipe for disaster!

The government should just compensate the farmers on the buildings they improved on the farms and not the lands. They acquired these properties using very draconian laws and cannot expect to be treated nicely to get back this land.If they dont have a solution on how they will give our people the land it should just be forcibly taken. They cant use the apartheid legitimacy and thuggery to prevent our people from owning the land. They should be made to understand that this is not the government problem alone but theirs also and should help find solutions and not create problems. Tata! Tata! Sipiwo Pahlane

amazing really; that they'd even consider appropriating succesful farms. I feel that this is a trump card which will be used at election time, should the DA look likely to make further inroads into the electorate.

Sipiwo, once you have forcefully taken the land back and SA can't feed it's people anymore then please don't go begging for aid from the whites in Europe and America!! Remember two wrongs don't make a right. Violence only breeds more violence. It's time to leave the past behind and look to a bright future for all it's people. But that can only happen if both whites and blacks change and accept each other and most of all work together so our children can have that bright future.

As the so-called disenfranchised can't prove ownership other than to point to a 'white-owned' farm and cry that this was theirs long ago - I find it incredible that with all the land available in this vast country and I mean 'good' land, that settlement has always to be the attack on commercially viable farmers. You cannot tell me that all 'white-owned farms' belonged once to someone else and were pinched from them? Not going to buy into this nonsense. However, to think out of the box and whilst borrowing ideas from others, why not try communual farming as done in Israel - their collective farms house their people, feed themselves, their country and bring in export revenue. Out of pure desert they have produced amazing food stuffs. The same can happen here. Do not take white farmers off their land - rather give the miles of unused land to the people and it wont cost the taxpayer anything, but will bring in revenue. Is that really such a difficult idea to contemplate?

It was only a matter of time. It has been shown that enough land became available on the open market to meet the government's goal and budgets. But then what would all the deployed officials at Land Affairs do? And how would they be able to secure farms for themselves and deal in bribery and extortion? Hello Zim.

Interesting. If whites were black (with respect for the genocidal eradication of the genetically very distinct 'bushmen' by both whites and northern blacks), someone would have a problem here. Who to give the land to. And how different are the whites and blacks, virtually indistinct genetically save color, and indistinct in any time scale, keeping in mind clear migration patterns. This is not redistribution based on race, simply clan. Once the obvious white settlers are dealt with a bullet each, the same exact clannish intolerance for almost any reason will be in place again. Simple biology. Leading to the turf wars of Rwanda and a leading country Kenya. Let there be a mentality of not the past, yet recognizing our ancient genetic brotherhood, ignoring territorial monkey tree-peeing dynamics, antics, and killing, and perhaps recognize this as a modern problem that is rainbow color-blind, and simply economic. Be pissed off about the haves, and not their pigment state (melanin is only one gene). If you don't get it, have ten children and let them complain.

What are the figures for Zimbabwe's agricultural production over say, the last 20 years? Should they show a decline would it not reflect how possibly this ''land reform'' programme will go?

Hey Sindile, wake up fcuk knuckle. Is you head so far up your ass that you dont even know what the hell has been happening in Zim. Do the words, food, starvation etc make any sense to you. You doos, do you know how to farm? Take your donkey and go live in Zim.

This land reform is indeed a major issue. I don't think that all the white people got the land by force. Some white people bought their land. We all know that farm lands are cheaper. South African gov' should be very carefull with this. Some of them they don'T even know how their forefathers got these lands. We have to be carefull, not all white people are bad and not all white people are good. ANC should give the land to the people who have no idea of farming. That is very important.