South Africa to amend constitution to allow land expropriation

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Jaskalas

Lifer
Jun 23, 2004
34,007
8,041
136
Stealing property creates new injustices, new harm to be avenged in a cycle of blood. What are they to do but flee to a safer and less volatile country? I suggest South Africans move to a country that endorses and safe guards human rights.
 

KMFJD

Lifer
Aug 11, 2005
30,031
45,270
136
Let's see what Ben Garrison's take on this could be

wEXZo6l.jpg


Thanks Obama
 

HomerJS

Lifer
Feb 6, 2002
36,734
28,908
136
Why do we care? It's just another one of those shithole countries, anyway.

Now Trump is showing concern for a country he just disparaged a few months ago? Oh wait a minute it's the white country in Africa.
 

Vic

Elite Member
Jun 12, 2001
50,422
14,336
136
Read up. Or don’t, it’s way easier to just lob insults, post "concerned", and make up shit to try and put in other people’s mouths.


https://qz.com/africa/1218309/south...s-zimbabwe-backtracks-on-seizing-white-farms/

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_Zimbabwe#Aftermath_and_outcomes
People make up shit to try and put in your mouth because you lack the courage to articulate your arguments. We already discussed this in another thread. If you're going to force me to guess your arguments, then I'm going to infer them from your words and as I see fit.

As for this issue, I am always opposed to government seizure of property without compensation. That particular crime committed over 100 years ago is how South Africa got in this mess in the first place. However, it's far, far more complicated than just a 'lack of expertise.'
 
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glenn1

Lifer
Sep 6, 2000
25,383
1,013
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Yeah, it's just coincidental that their 'lack of expertise' is tied to their skin color, right?

I would think a lack of expertise would be related to folks not having direct working or educational experience in a domain, which is independent of their skin color. You could take a black person who was a Nobel laureate in astrophysics and that still won't mean he'll be great at working the land of a white farmer if you confiscate the later's land. You could take a white farmer and give him the particle accelerator you confiscate from the black astrophysicist and he's not going to discover a new type of quark particle.

Since the most relevant previous example of this action was Zimbabwe doing the same basic thing, but not lining up blacks with experience in farming to hand over the confiscated land to and having the production of the farm plummet it's a reasonable question to ask if SA will repeat the same practice.
 

dasherHampton

Platinum Member
Jan 19, 2018
2,543
488
96
Firstly - I do believe some kind of resolution needs to be found here. Hopefully it can be peaceful.

Than being said: I love irony.

The SA government is pushing this through to deflect the fact that their economy is an unmitigated disaster. Then Trump jumps on it to deflect from his issues. Next move?

I'm not that old, but I'm entering Carlin territory here. I just want a front row seat to the show.
 

emperus

Diamond Member
Apr 6, 2012
7,819
1,573
136
South Africa is not Zimbabwe. And I'm all for reclaiming all property stolen by colonization.
 
Nov 8, 2012
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South Africa is not Zimbabwe. And I'm all for reclaiming all property stolen by colonization.

Even if it ultimately kills the economy - ultimately making it a Venezuela because a major component of their economy (and food) are at risk of going away?

Also, your land was stolen by colonization. Can I come claim it?
 

Vic

Elite Member
Jun 12, 2001
50,422
14,336
136
I would think a lack of expertise would be related to folks not having direct working or educational experience in a domain, which is independent of their skin color. You could take a black person who was a Nobel laureate in astrophysics and that still won't mean he'll be great at working the land of a white farmer if you confiscate the later's land. You could take a white farmer and give him the particle accelerator you confiscate from the black astrophysicist and he's not going to discover a new type of quark particle.

Since the most relevant previous example of this action was Zimbabwe doing the same basic thing, but not lining up blacks with experience in farming to hand over the confiscated land to and having the production of the farm plummet it's a reasonable question to ask if SA will repeat the same practice.
I can agree with all this. Except that the white separatist types never frame it this way.
 

GagHalfrunt

Lifer
Apr 19, 2001
25,284
1,996
126
Why do we care? It's just another one of those shithole countries, anyway.

Because nothing in Africa stay localized. One shithole spreads to other shitholes as people flee the original shithole. South Africa was at least a shithole that could feed its people. Now it won't be and either the food has to come from somewhere else or the people have to go somewhere else. Cue up yet another refugee crisis in 3...2...1...go!
 
Nov 8, 2012
20,828
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Because nothing in Africa stay localized. One shithole spreads to other shitholes as people flee the original shithole. South Africa was at least a shithole that could feed its people. Now it won't be and either the food has to come from somewhere else or the people have to go somewhere else. Cue up yet another refugee crisis in 3...2...1...go!

Which is probably one of the main reasons the US supplies a lot of countries with resources and money... to try and maintain civility and an economy.

Sounds like Europe needs to pony up more money instead of just paying off Turkey to try and hold the refugees there.
 

pauldun170

Diamond Member
Sep 26, 2011
9,142
5,089
136
Just doing some reading....tossing up to share

South Africa has a history of colonial conquest and dispossession that pushed the black majority into crowded urban townships and rural reserves.

The 1913 Native Lands Act made it illegal for Africans to acquire land outside of these reserves, which became known as “Homelands”. While blacks account for 80 percent of South Africa’s population, the homelands comprise just 13 percent of the land. They are largely controlled by tribal authorities rather ordinary residents and farmers.

Since the end of white minority rule in 1994, the ANC has followed a “willing-seller, willing-buyer” model whereby the government buys white-owned farms for redistribution to blacks. Progress has been slow.

Based on a survey of title deeds, the government says blacks own 4 percent of private land, and only 8 percent of farmland has been transferred to black hands, well short of a target of 30 percent that was meant to have been reached in 2014.

AgriSA, a farm industry group, says 27 percent of farmland is in black hands. Its figure includes state land and plots tilled by black subsistence farmers in the old homelands.

Ben Cousins, a professor in Agrarian Studies at the University of the Western Cape, has noted there are no estimates on private transactions involving black farmers who have purchased land themselves, so the data is incomplete.

There has been a parallel process of “land claims” by individuals or communities dispossessed under white rule, but most of the settlements have involved cash paid by the state instead of people reoccupying their land, and 87 percent of the claims have been urban.

The ANC government pledged to transfer 30 percent of commercial farmland to blacks during its first decade in power. Very little land, however, has been returned and the target date for redistribution has been pushed back another 10 years.
...
Jerry Maropa(ph), who's leading the claim against Fisser's farm, says land reform in South Africa is going too slowly. He points out that he first laid claim to Fisser's property in 1998.

Mr. JERRY MAROPA (Laid Claim to Fisser's Property): We have negotiated, but we cannot negotiate forever.

BEAUBIEN: Maropa says Abraham Melamo(ph), his grandfather, was driven from Fisser's farm during World War II.

Mr. MAROPA: It was not sold. It was not sold. They were forced to move out. My grandfather did not sign even a single document to say he was compensated.

BEAUBIEN: Fisser is fighting the expropriation order in court and remains on his property. South Africa's land reform program, until the Fisser case, operated under a willing-buyer, willing-seller principle. If the farmer was willing to sell, the government would buy the land and give it to blacks. But it's been a slow, clumsy process. Despite its flaws, Maropa says land restitution is extremely important to blacks in southern Africa.

Mr. MAROPA: There's a lot of anger, embedded anger within African people for being moved out of their lands.
https://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=4993861

A government audit shows whites own 72 percent of South Africa's land and black South Africans, who make up 80 percent of the population, own just 4 percent. Since the end of apartheid in 1994, the government has tried various land reform policies, including a willing seller, willing buyer program. Critics of that system say the government has been too willing to buy land at inflated prices, and that the government is hoarding the land instead of transferring it to would-be farmers. President Cyril Ramaphosa says a quarter century into democracy, it's time to address the country's original sin.
https://www.npr.org/2018/04/20/6044...-efforts-to-get-more-land-into-black-ownershi
 
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Vic

Elite Member
Jun 12, 2001
50,422
14,336
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Even if it ultimately kills the economy - ultimately making it a Venezuela because a major component of their economy (and food) are at risk of going away?

Also, your land was stolen by colonization. Can I come claim it?
My position on this issue is that the obvious solution is integration. That way requires no violence and no more stealing.
America has made some good headway in this, slowly correcting the mistakes of the separatist policies of the reservations and Jim Crow. South Africa still has a very long way to go. Apartheid as government policy may be over, but it still remains as economic and cultural policies.
 

BurnItDwn

Lifer
Oct 10, 1999
26,167
1,638
126
100% death tax, when people die, break up their land holdings and auction them off. Fair "reset" for everyone.
 
Nov 8, 2012
20,828
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100% death tax, when people die, break up their land holdings and auction them off. Fair "reset" for everyone.

Again, what do you do when the people it is handed over to are unable to successful keep the farm land growing? Think about the bigger picture instead of just "It's not fair that they have their land". I'm worried more about the survival and starvation of a country than whom owns some bare farming land.
 

Vic

Elite Member
Jun 12, 2001
50,422
14,336
136

Jhhnn

IN MEMORIAM
Nov 11, 1999
62,365
14,681
136

crashtech

Lifer
Jan 4, 2013
10,580
2,150
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I'm not going to debate the justice of this, that's a dead horse as far as I care. With recent history as a guide, though, this is very likely to be a disaster for SA. Let's see what their financial situation and food imports look like 10 years from now.