Few remaining white-owned farms will have to be split in half for handover to farm-workers; conference
September 5 2014 - Boksburg. At a chaotic 'agricultural conference' in Boksburg , the ANC minister for land reform Gugile Nkwinti warned South Africa's few remaining white farmers that 'they are not allowed to reject the 50% land-split deal. They will have to meet us half-way.'
Landbouweekblad reporters and other Afrikaners attending the conference were forced to walk through an aggressive line of people who were chanting hatespeech, it was reported.
"It was one of the most chaotic conferences I've ever had to cover. Logistics problems, long lines to register the 2,500 delegates, all led to long delays.
The entire morning we were forced to walk through long lines of protestors chanting at us, to reach the large tent.
President Zuma's name appeared on the programme but he failed to show, claiming he had to attend another meeting,' writes
Carien Kruger on September 5 2014.
"Farm workers should get something for all the work they do" - said Nkwinti - and half the farm is the least the farmers should be giving them, farmers should meet them halfway.'
He said it was 'wrong that farm-workers have nothing to show at the end of their lives for all the hard work they do.'
He proposed a plan in which 'the government;' (i.e. the taxpayers) would buy up 50 percent of the remaining white farms and hand this land over the farm workers 'who have worked on those farms for a long time.
The money will not be paid to the farmers but paid into a trust fund to 'empower the workers'.
He said those delegates who opposed the plan are not allowed to reject it. "The question is: how are you going to meet us halfway?"
He issued a warning: "Things are still going well in South Africa but we cannot guarantee that it will still remain the same within ten or 20 years..."
"We want to set to rights a specifically South African problem. Those who control seventy percent of the land are only 14 percent of the population.."
He said it was 'morally indefensible that people who owned more than 30,000 hectares of land because 'there are people who have nothing and are hungry'.
He is setting up a commission to investigate 'who stole our State land'. "Our Department will use the same tactics as did the Income Tax Department:
-- "If you confess ('talk') we will not prosecute you'. (under this act any white farmer who 'interferes with land-claimants rights to their land' face stiff prison sentences.)
He did say something about 'communal land ' (the former homelands make up more than 40 percent of the total land surface and more than 1million black farmers occupy this land).
He noted that he wanted to 'legalise the people using communal lands so that they can use the land (with banks) as collatoral'.
Download the new law: 'Act No 15 of 2014: Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act, 2014: Nr 37791 1 July 2014 Vol 589:
(The English version of this Act was signed by the President of South Africa)
DOWNLOAD THE PDF FILE FROM THE GOVERNMENT WEBSITE AT:
http://www.ruraldevelopment.gov.za/legislation-and-policies/file/2697
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