Endemic famine in S.Africa future warns farmers' union

[This is from Adriana Stuijt. Jan]

May 28 2007 -- The Transvaal Agricultural Union notes in its latest media statement that the new French president is just as attentive to his farming sector as all of France's previous leaders have ever been.

"There is a chasm of difference between the attitude of the French government towards its agricultural sector, and the manner in which the South African administration trods on the very sector which puts food on the table for more than 46-million South Africans," the TLU notes.

The French Salon International d'Agriculture (SIA) is the world's largest farming and food show. Held in seven large exhibition halls at the Porte de Versailles in Paris, it puts France at the center of the world food map. Over 700,000 visitors attended the show this year, and French politicians ignore this show and France's farming community at their peril. So, they all show up... year after year.

A British agricultural expert declared that "France's love of great food begins with the love of the animals and the farmers who produce it".

This is how civilized people should - and do - act. Food security is the bedrock of any successful country.

Yet what is happening in South Africa vis a vis the government's poor treatment of the commercial farming sector is unfathomable when looked at from a Western perspective - the 45 000 commercial farmers in South Africa are hounded at every turn.

TAU SA has declared publicly that the SA government is the biggest single threat to commercial farmers. These are strong words, and are not uttered lightly.

Readers of TAU SA bulletins over the years need no reminding of the catalogue of hurdles which are continually placed before farmers. Some farmers feel that the SA government is deliberately trying to drive them off their land. Government policy is driven by ideology, not economic practicality. It is also driven by a none-too-subtle anti-white racism which is beginning to percolate through the SA body politic.

The French consumer is continually reminded that food and farming are intrinsically linked.

In South Africa the professional ('white') farmer is portrayed as someone who 'stole black land', an interloper, the "landed gentry" as farmers were referred to by a Cape Town university think tank.
The Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Lulu Xingwana even very publicly accuses our farmers of crimes such as rape and illegal evictions without providing even one shred of evidence to support these statements.

Our agricultural-protection commando system - the former backbone of all our rural security over the past 250 years - has been one-sidedly disbanded overnight, and replaced with no protection at all.

South African farmers are the most murdered group of people outside a war zone - (more than 2,000 ouf of the remaining 45,000 farmers have been murdered since 1994).

South Africa faces permanent food-shortages

In December 2006, TAU SA wrote to the agriculture minister -- outlining the perils facing a South Africa which appeared to be heading down the same path as the rest of sub-Saharan Africa - i.e. chronic famines and food shortages.

TAU warned that conducting an agricultural policy on an ideological basis rather than on an economically sustainable basis would have serious consequences.

"Ideologically-and race-based land reform and agricultural production do not mix", TAU said.
It is unimaginable that French farmers would ever be in a position even vaguely similar to that of South Africa's farmers.

30% of all our productive farmland lost forever...

If the French government dared to institute a policy where 30% of productive farmland would be forcibly handed over to a people who have proven that they cannot farm, and whose track record of maintaining productivity was an abysmal zero, they would be out of office in a jiffy.

In South Africa 'white' farmers represent only 0.01% of the population and also have little or no power at the ballot box, yet produce all of the country's food for its 46-million people. France's 600,000 commercial farmers represent one percent of their country's population.

French farming is subsidized to 17% of its output - compared to American farm subsidies at 14% of output. French agricultural production is two thirds of America's, while the US has almost five times more people than France.

Thus, looking after farmers makes good sense for any government - except of course in South Africa. TAU says that SA commercial agriculture is being coerced into operating within an unstable environment.

Imagine the French government trying to coerce French farmers into anything!

Imagine French society tolerating the legalised theft called Black Economic Empowerment, while watching their country succumb to:

- A collapsing infrastructure,
- bankrupt local councils,
- dirty, inefficient state hospitals,
- trains too dangerous to board,
- rail and road deterioration and
- a corruption which bleeds the country dry.

TAU SA warned the Minister that a point of no return is approaching for commercial agriculture in South Africa. Instead of subsidies, SA farmers are even further taxed - even paying municipal- and water-taxes although they get no services in return for this money.

Instead of being proud of their very efficient professional farmers, the SA government takes away their land instead.

Where in any sane country would this ever happen?

Which government would be so obtuse and self-destructive as to alienate those few people - only 0.01% of the population -- who actually produce enough food to feed the entire population of 46-million people?

Now, with the number of professional farmers dropping dramatically -- there were 80,000 in 1994 but less than 46,000 remain on the land today -- sustainable food production is seriously at risk in South Africa too: thus we are following the trail of destruction also seen in the rest of Africa, where famine is always a gaunt reality -- indeed where it is endemic.

The future doesn't bode well for South Africa because the ANC-regime's 'land reform' and its agricultural policies are a proven failure.

It's not putting food on our tables -- and now the regime is planning even more legislation to hobble ' white ' professional farmers even more: such as the water department's "Draft Regulations on Financial Assistance to Resource Poor Farmers".

The Freedom Front warns that this legislation "is formulated in such a way that it excludes poor white farmers -- in fact, it excludes all whites". Irrigation and water-related developments are proposed only for black farmers, but not for whites -- who are the only productive sector of South African agriculture.

Meanwhile the regime's expropriation process continues even though less and less food is produced each year.

88% of all Limpopo farms being claimed:

Eighty-eight percent of all white-owned farms in the productive Limpopo province are being claimed by blacks.

This precipitates insecurity and unease, and of course prevents re-investment by farmers in their land.

It is costly for farmers to legally defend themselves against these land claims, many of which are based on flimsy or even irregular grounds.

Many farmers who have "sold" their land to the government have to wait years for payment, if they get paid at all. In some provinces, commercial agricultural structures have to wait more than a year before letters to the authorities are even answered.
71 collapsed Limpopo farms prove the ANC's failed land policy:

Presently the government is threatening to take back 71 Limpopo farms which were handed over to black workers under their land reform programme. All these farms have collapsed totally.

It's a no-win situation for commercial farmers.
If you want to sell your farm to the government, you may have to wait years for anything to happen, let alone be paid. If you don't want to sell your farm, you are threatened with expropriation.

And to top it all, more than 2,000 commercial farmers have already been murdered - often they were tortured to death in cowardly armed attacks during which their family members also fequently were raped and tortured -- since the ANC took power.

The South African government should take a leaf from the book of the sensible French - not to do so will have serious consequences for food security in southern Africa. info@tlu.co.za

Date Posted: Friday 22-Jun-2007
ANC'S image battered by years of torture practices

DEC.10 2000 -- Amnesty International already knew from the year 2000 about the brutal torture practices in SA Police and Mmilitary custody carried out under the ANC-regime.

And in the year 2003, Amnesty International reported that "deaths in custody in suspicious circumstances, torture and excessive use of force by the police continued to be reported (from South Africa).

A resurgence in political violence led to deaths and injuries. Levels of reported rape of women and girls remained high; few of those responsible were ever brought to justice.

The Constitutional Court ruled that legislation governing the use of lethal force violated the right to life.

Regulations preventing asylum-seekers from working or studying inside the country were declared unlawful and unconstitutional..."

Their 2003 report notes that 'there were continuing reports of incidents of torture and suspicious deaths in custody.

The Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) reported that there had been 37 complaints of torture and 255 complaints of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm during the year ending 31 March 2002, a significant increase compared with the previous year.

In the same period they investigated 214 incidents of deaths in custody and 371 deaths resulting from “police action”, primarily shootings by police when conducting arrests or intervening to stop a crime.

In a third of fully investigated cases, the ICD concluded that there was sufficient evidence to recommend prosecution of the police officers involved.

deliberate killings by police of arrested suspects:
In May, a member of a Community Policing Forum, Siphiwe Phakathi, was shot at close range at Ekuvukeni police station KwaZulu Natal, where he had gone to submit a complaint. He died from gunshot injuries to the neck and chest.

In April the magistrate’s court in Ixopo, KwaZulu Natal, convicted one soldier of murder and two other soldiers of assault with intent to do grievous bodily harm in connection with the torture of Basil Jaca during a military raid on his home in July 2000.

During the assault they repeatedly pushed a rifle barrel into his anus. He died from his injuries the following day.

The Mpumalanga Deputy Commissioner of Police visited KaNyamazane police station in December following numerous complaints of human rights violations and failures to assist crime victims, including rape survivors.

Earlier in the year, two KaNyamazane police officers were charged and put on trial as accomplices in the torture of a 13-year-old boy suspected of theft.

The boy had been whipped, dunked in a river and his genitals and other parts of his body were burned with molten plastic and cigarettes by four other people who were also brought to trial. The trials were continuing at the end of the year.

"On 21 May the Constitutional Court ruled 'potentially lethal force could only be used if there were reasonable grounds for believing that the suspect posed an immediate threat of serious bodily harm or had committed a crime involving the infliction or threatened infliction of serious bodily harm.

During the World Summit on Sustainable Development in August 2002, policey detained more than 70 activists from the Landless People’s Movement and the National Land Committee.

On release the detainees were charged under an apartheid era law with participating in an illegal demonstration and public violence; the charges were withdrawn.

One detainee, Girly Zitha, was denied medical attention and suffered a miscarriage while in custody. Civil society organizations submitted a complaint to the South African Human Rights Commission criticizing police for resorting to the use of force without justification and causing injuries to peaceful demonstrators.

Prison conditions:

"A commission of inquiry into corruption in the prison service chaired by Judge Thabani Jali heard evidence of extensive abuses at Grootvlei prison in the Free State.

RAPES OF JUVENILES IN PRISON;

The abuses included the rape of juvenile prisoners by warders or by other prisoners in collusion with warders, the intimidation of “whistle blowers” and physical violence against complainants.

Disciplinary hearings against 21 Grootvlei prison warders began in November and were continuing at the end of the year.

In November the South African Human Rights Commission reported that some 230 prisoners remained under sentence of death owing to bureaucratic problems and delays in judicial proceedings following the abolition of the death penalty in 1995.

The Commission condemned this situation as a violation of the prisoners’ rights to dignity, to just administrative action, and not to be subjected to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment.

LINK TO REPORT:
http://web.amnesty.org/report2003/zaf-summary...

Electric shocks, suffocation, forced painful postures, suspension from helicopters, beatings...

Amnesty International (AI) said in 2000 that it "continues to receive corroborated evidence of abuses that include the use of electric shocks, suffocation, forced painful postures, suspension from moving vehicles and helicopters, and severe and prolonged beatings.

"There are clusters of police stations around the country where repeated incidences of torture are reported," says Mary Rayner, a researcher for Amnesty International's Africa programme in London.

Rayner, part of an AI delegation who visited South Africa in October to investigate torture, said in 2000 "that there appears to be a lack of seriousness on the part of authorities in dealing with this matter.

The public perception has been that a clear and consistent message condemning these practices is lacking," she adds.

"This failure, combined with the deficient resources for monitoring bodies like the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD), contribute to the impunity enjoyed by the perpetrators.

Gareth Newham, a criminal-justice policy researcher for the Centre for the Study of Violence and Reconciliation, agreed with AI's concerns about human rights abuses.

"The torture policy that is in place at the moment is very bureaucratic," he says, "and what tends to happen is that police opt to torture suspects outside of the station's precincts. You find station commanders who aren't too concerned about complaints of police torture or brutality."

In their 2004 reports, matters hadn't improved much: they reported that "In November a warder at the C-MAX maximum security prison in Pretoria told the Commission that a medical officer and section head had failed to stop named warders stripping, punching and slapping newly arrived prisoners, and torturing them with electric shocks.

He alleged that he had been threatened if he testified. The Commission requested his transfer to another prison.

In Vryheid prison more than 80 prisoners were assaulted by warders in January when they objected to a new form of body searches.

Independent medical evidence corroborated prisoners' allegations that, after being stripped and forced to lie on the ground, they were beaten with batons and stamped on. Civil proceedings were launched against the Correctional Services authorities.

Between April 2002 and March 2003 the ICD received 528 reports of deaths in custody and as a result of police action. The police used lethal force while conducting an arrest or stopping a suspect from fleeing in 189 cases, more than half of them in Gauteng and KwaZulu Natal provinces.

The ICD reported that, despite the Constitutional Court ruling in 2002 against lethal force where there was no threat to life, it had been used without justification.

At the end of the year the trial for murder was pending against a Vaalbank police officer in connection with the death of 16-year-old Edward Molokomme in September 2002. The boy and his 17- year-old friend, Duncan Phiri, had been shot at by a police officer when they fled into a forest to escape arrest for breaking bottles at the roadside. Duncan Phiri survived.

http://web.amnesty.org/library/eng-zaf/index

On 14 November 2006, Amnesty International was urging South Africa to refrain from the illegal practices against Muslims in the country by 'members of intelligence and police services against individuals suspected of links with international "terrorist" organizations resulted in the incommunicado detention, ill-treatment or forcible repatriation of immigrants or asylum-seekers.

AMNESTY INTERNATIONAL NEVER mentioned the torture and maltreatment suffered by the Boeremag-21 at the hands of the SA police and prison wardens. Not once.

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAFR53...

By 2006, South Africa had set up its own branch of Amnesty International inside the country -- manned by ANC-insiders. These reports now hardly ever mention the wa South Africa runs its cops and prisons.

http://web.amnesty.org/library/Index/ENGAFR53...

torture by Zimbabwe cops:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0QMlt4Pc5iI&mo...

Zimbabwe farm song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=saHbs3mVbWw&mo...

Adriana Stuijt
Dokkum
Netherlands

Date Posted: Friday 08-Jun-2007
It may be interesting for overseas readers to note that ANC members of parliament have urged their supporters to murder white farmers (post 1994 "democracy"). The late Peter Mokaba, aids denialist and chairman of the ANC youth league, repeated urged his followers to "Kill the Boer". The western media have, of course, ignored this. This is the ANC whose virtues the western media repeatedly extoll. Isolate these scum, I say.

Ric Tracey
Australia

Date Posted: Friday 08-Jun-2007
In response to Mal comments, you have obviously got the point I was making wrong, it's obvious South Africa is going down the drain fast. There is no way that I want to see South African farmers suffer they are hard working people like most farmers. South Africans have also fought side by side with Australians during two World Wars.
When there is massive starvation in South Africa because of the farming sector collapsing the Western World will be asked to come to the rescue i.e unfortunately more foreign aid and more taxes for us.
Regarding my comments about Australia benefiting economically from South Africa's demise I was stating the obvious, hopefully South Africa's farmers,scientist,engineers, medical specialists etc will consider Australia as a future home.
By the way our politicans are arse lickers and we do owe a lot of money, however our economy is very strong even during a severe drought, read the OECD reports and look at the unemployment figures. This country produces enought food for 80 million people plus we are one of the largest exporters of raw materials. If we stay a predominately white christian nation we will stay politically stable.
Sorry mate the devil doesn't rule the world, money and power hungry people do, we just need 'Joe Average' to take an interest and put systems in place to control the financial elite !


Bob the Aussie
Sydney
Australia

Date Posted: Thursday 07-Jun-2007
Oh my, the "Great Satan" is at is again. Ha ha ha.. Soon enough.. We the "Great Satan" will be out of the way, and then who(m) will you have to blame for the fact that mankind is just too greedy, self-centered, and just plain too stupid to properly run their own affairs.. Get your party supplies together, soon enough all of you "Great Satan" haters will have your party.. But once we are gone, and everything is STILL messed up, who will you blame then??

Jesus is the Light and the Way..



Lee Robertson
Houston
USA

Date Posted: Thursday 07-Jun-2007
Poor South Africa, yet another victim of the evil machinations and economic policies of the World Bank and the IMF enacting directions received, of course, from the great Satan the United States of America. Bob the Aussie, I wouldn’t crow too loudly if I were you. Australia is also a captive to the great Satan, and is being kept afload only by virtue of the amount of toadying and arsekissing that our politicians are willing to do. Australia’s slow decline into third-world status can very easily be accelerated by those who really weild the power.

Mal Lee
Hopetoun
Australia

Date Posted: Wednesday 06-Jun-2007
Sorry to say it but if Sth African farming goes under this is good news for Australian farmers. It a known fact that Sth Africa has one of the most productive farming sectors in the world and competes very successfully with Australia, Canada and America. Having said that the Sth African govt. must be run by idiots, why are they trying to starve their own people? I think that I just answered my own question they are idiots!
P.S Sth Africa also competes with us in the mining industry.Please do to mining what your leaders are doing to your farming industry, it means more jobs for us.

Bob the Aussie
Sydney
Australia

Date Posted: Wednesday 06-Jun-2007
This wouldn't happen in the U.S., either. It is obvious that Africa cannot govern itself. Their communist-style outlook makes sensible economics impossible and their professional victim attitude makes true reform a distant dream. Look around the dark continent and it is obvious that no former colony is a viable political entity. White nations should treat black Africa like they treat their white citizens. NO aid for any kind until they prove they are making real reforms and respect the human rites of all of their citizens. It is a contest between famine/AIDS and the animals. I am cheering for the animals.

Lowell McKown
Amarillo, Texas
USA

Date Posted: Wednesday 06-Jun-2007
Interesting and depressing article. You should have done your maths better, though. 45 000 farmers out of a population of 45 million do not amount to 0.01 per cent but to 0.1 per cent.
Best thoughts
Lars Adelskogh


Lars Adelskogh
Skövde
Sweden