- JOHANNESBURG, South Africa
(Reuters) - White South African farmers have warned that farm killings
and legislation are threatening to tip the country's agricultural sector
into a crisis similar to that of neighboring Zimbabwe.
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- "There is growing concern among white South African
farmers as regards their future, mainly as a result of events in Zimbabwe
and Namibia, but also as a result of certain actions, or lack of action,
in South Africa," leading trade magazine SA Grain said in an editorial
in its latest edition.
-
- "If this spirit of anxiety and negativism is not
addressed vigorously and effectively, the long-term sustainability of agriculture
in South Africa is in danger."
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- SA Grain accused South African President Thabo Mbeki
and his ruling African National Congress of "marching down a road
that must end in the destruction of the White South African."
-
- The warning comes against a backdrop of a controversial
land drive in Zimbabwe, where President Robert Mugabe has sanctioned a
sometimes violent land grab by blacks to reverse the white domination of
the country's best commercial farmland.
-
- South Africa's government has consistently said it will
not tolerate Zimbabwe-style land grabs on its soil, emphasizing that any
land reform that takes place under it will be done in a market-friendly
manner and within the rule of law.
-
- SA Grain said South African farmers were "already
experiencing Zimbabwe-style situations on their farms," citing one
farmer who had been unable to evict about 40,000 people who had illegally
occupied his land near Johannesburg.
-
- "The question in everyone's mind...is: 'Will we
have a Zimbabwe in South Africa? Or...How long will it be before we too
are driven from our land?"'
-
- The editorial also highlighted strict new labor legislation,
stringent property taxes and continued farm attacks as reasons for heightened
anxiety among South African farmers, despite a good grain crop and prices
for other commodities.
-
- Farmers say their profession is the most dangerous in
the country, with 145 farmers killed in 1,000 attacks last year, compared
to 84 murders in 433 attacks in 1997, South Africa's main farmers organization
Agri SA said Monday.
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- South Africa has some of the highest rates of violent
crime in the world, fueled by poverty and glaring income disparities.
-
- Agri SA say the number of farmers has fallen to about
50,000 from 130,000 some 30 years ago, mainly due to farm violence and
economic hardship.
-
- The South African government said last week it aimed
to put 30 percent of agricultural land in black hands by 2015 in a bid
to right the wrongs of apartheid which dispossessed hundreds of thousands
of black South Africans of their ancestral land.
-
- It has promised that its land reform program will be
peaceful and orderly, and has so far carried out all its transactions on
a "willing buyer, willing seller" basis.
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