- This information comes from a veteran journalist, Adrianna
Stuijt who is watching the farm murder situation in South Africa. -Jan
-
- The Afrikaans agricultural weekly Landbouweekblad warns
today that the threat of violent farm take-overs are looming larger in
South Africa than ever before, now that the minister of agriculture has
given formal recognition to the violence-driven Landless People's Movement:
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- Only this week, two of the LPM's foreign sponsors --
the British charities Oxfam International and War on Want (WoW) -- were
risking criminal terrorism charges in the United Kingdom by continuing
to fund them.
-
- The LPM has not only actively started illegal land invasions
from December -- but also is openly threatening to kill white farmers --
prompting SA's agricultural minister to hold an emergency with the group.
-
- She did this after LPM national coordinator, Mangaliso
Kubheka, had publicly told the local newsmedia that paramilitary training
camps were being set up to prepare ìcadresî to strike back
at "abuse farmers".
-
- See background on Land Occupation Campaign Sites: http://groups.msn.com/adrianastuijtsjournalismduringapartheidsite/landlesspeople.msnw
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- On January 6, heavily armed guards and police had been
ordered by the regime to launch the forced removal of about 300 squatter
huts and some 3,000 members of the Landless People's Movement near Snake
Park, Kroonstad (FS).
-
- These poor black families had erected their huts within
just a few days on this state-owned communal grazing land in a deliberately
defiant show of force against the ANC government 's land redistribution
programme -- claiming that this common state-owned land was theirs to occupy.
-
- Municipal spokesman Valentine Senkhame claimed after
the forced removal that they had tried to negotiate peacefully with the
squatters.
-
- However considerable violence was used during the forced
removal, which was very reminiscent of apartheid style forced removals:
teargas and stun grenades were fired, stones were thrown, huts were invaded
by policemen with police dogs and evacuated at gunpoint -- and the shacks
were then emptied out of people's belongings and bulldozed.
-
- This show of force may have impressed foreign investors,
worried about their private commercial holdings in South Africa.
-
- It is important to note however that the ANC regime has
thus far only intervened this forcefully whenever state-owned land was
illegally occupied -- but never intervenes in identical commercial land
occupations.
-
- It is a matter of record that the ANC refuses to take
any similar action in any illegal occupations of commercial land sites
which are being overrun by such squatter invasions: For instance, the farm
of maize/dairy farmer Duvenhage near Benoni has been overrun by 40,000
aggressive squatters who use his electricity, reticulated water, tear down
his fences and loot his livestock and crops.
-
- And it's been like that for the past four years.
-
- Yet, in spite of a High Court ordering the regime to
remove these squatters, nothing whatsoever has been done.
-
- The local police say they are under orders from the "highest
authority" not to obey the court order.
-
- Meanwhile as part of the ANC's election campaign, the
ANC 's labour department has also launched what it has given a nazi-term,
namely "blitzes" on commercial farms and also at other Afrikaner-owned
businesses such as Volskblad newspaper in Bloemfontein - labour inspectors
accompanied by a large contingent of pro-ANC journalists are now routinely
invading Afrikaner-owned commercial enterprises with claims that workers
had complained about "maltreatment".
-
- See: http://www.gov.za/speech.php?ID=04011309461004&coll=speech04
-
- This week, the editor of the Landbouweekblad writes in
his commentary that "until this week, the Landless People's Movement
had been dismissed as a small group of loud-mouthed campaigners blathering
hate-speech with a fax machine who really didn't deserve much attention.
-
- "But then our agriculture minister decided to give
them legitimacy when she held a meeting with this group, which encourages
hate-speech and murder and anti-state violence. Now she's given them recognition
and legitimacy by holding a meeting with them."
-
- The editorial pointed out that for the past decade, the
Landless People's Movement has made countless threats and unfounded allegations
abput maltreatment of farm workers -- allegations which when tested in
law courts and through police investigations, had always been proven to
be out-and-out lies.
-
- "Their sensational claims of maltreatment and abuse
by farmers were widely published, and also their lies that farmers were
raising land prices deliberately to block the land reform process."
-
- "The legitimacy which the government now gives to
this terrorist organisation together with the huge publicity which their
lies received, were enough to justify an increase in the farm attacks and
farm murders.
-
- "By acknowledging this organisation, the agricultural
minister is now giving momentum to a growing climate of anarchy in which
anyone who can stamp their feet and sing hate songs can participate lustily."
-
- "To date, the government had spoken with two mouths.
On the one hand it says that it will not 'tolerate illegal farm occupations.'(to
mollify foreign investors).
-
- "But on the other hand the government refuses to
acknowledge the fact that commercial, professional farmers who happen to
be white, form an important cornerstone of the country's economy."
-
- http://www.landbou.com/LandbouWeekblad/Kommentaar/0,,1294-1298_1473666,00.html
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- Walter Ntuli rumoured to become the first black chairman
of Agri-SA?
-
- Meanwhile the big question which seems to occupy the
minds of SA's commercial agricultural sector isn't the growing food shortage
nor the threat of land invasions -- but rather whether Walter Ntuli is
going to be the country's first black chairman of the agricultural union
Agri-Sa, once the so-called "bulwark of Afrikaner nationalism".
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- http://www.landbou.com/LandbouWeekblad/Kommentaar/Home/0,,,00.html
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- Adriana Stuijt Holwerd, FRIESLAND NETHERLANDS Wednesday
January 28, 2004 06:12:54
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