The Wog wrote:
It occurred to me that the same might happen in South Africa. I have had an interest there since Delta(inc. ZIM plat) was taken over by Placer - but I'm curious about what will happen to the (already limited) gold supply if both South Africa and Zimbabwe go the same way. BTW, did you know Mugabe has pledged years and years of future mineral production to Gaddafhi in return for oil. A cynic might see reason in that for Libya's readmission to civilization...
Also, BHP investment in god-forsaken Mocambique is starting to look like not-a-bad idea, given that Mocambique has already gone through this phase, returned to reality and is once again welcoming foreign investment.
"Zimbabwe-style land grab in South Africa? ... When radicals representing the 6,000 squatters in Hout Bay, a sunny seaside community just outside Cape Town, stormed the Cape High Court last week, South Africa whites were not surprised. Landless blacks have been protesting their plight since the late 1940s. However, what was shocking to South Africans was the fact that these protesters were carrying Zimbabwean flags.... ... 'But then South African President Mbeki gave Mugabe twice as much time to speak at the conference as any other leader. Mugabe and Namibian leader Nujoma railed against the West, along with Venezuelans and Cuban Marxists. U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell was booed off the stage when he criticized Mubage's confiscation of the white farmland in Zimbabwe. Make no mistake ? Mugabe has the full support of the non-white community in South Africa, save for the million black Zimbabweans who fled to South Africa to escape Mugabe's man-made famine. Hout Bay is the final sign that this is the beginning of the end for white South Africans', said Botha. ... A representative of South Africa's white farmers told WorldNetDaily that the ANC has set a series of laws in place to allow blacks to confiscate white-owned farms. 'Basically, the new ANC laws say that any black can make a verbal claim to white-owned farmland by saying their ancestors were taken off that land by force. It is up to the white farmer to prove that he owns the land', the representative said. 'We saw the ANC faithful chanting , at a recent funeral for a top ANC leader. The Marxist intellectuals have set the ideology for killing whites and taking all they own. Now that ideology is being marketed to the black impoverished masses. The South African army and police are now a joke under ANC rule. Who can stop what is coming?' ... ANC foreign affairs chief Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma issued a statement challenging Leon, saying that it was 'too late' to change Zimbabwe's course and that it was 'time to focus on Britain's failure to finance land distribution'.
'Mugabe has claimed that Zimbabwe's farmers owned 75 percent of the country. In reality, they owned roughly 15 percent. Most of the white farmers purchased their farms after Mugabe took power', Julie McKay, a spokesperson for Zimbabwean Justice for Agriculture told WND. The Pan African Congress, a radical black Marxist group, has given the ANC an order to begin Zimbabwean-type land reform by April of 2003. However, it appears that some in South Africa aren't willing to wait that long. The PAC said recently that it supported the claim to all white-owned farms and assets as issued by Namibia's Nujoma and Zimbabwe's Mugabe. In a press release, PAC President Stanley Magoba stated, 'We indeed agree with them, as we have always done, that there can be no peace for all if there is no land for all'. ... Spearheading the new drive for Zimbabwean-style land reform in South Africa is the so-called Landless People's Movement. The LPM has mushroomed miraculously almost overnight into a global organization linked to radical Marxist groups from all over the world ? the most important being La Via Campesia, an international group of 'disenfranchised' rural people.
At the recent Sustainable Development Conference in Johannesburg, the LPM marched in defiance of globalization and what they felt is the ANC's pro-capitalist stance in regard to their domestic fiscal and economic policy.
During this march, the LPM handed out leaflets stating: 'The leaders of the world tell us over and over that they are solving our problems, saving our Earth, providing us with a better life. But the system they represent, neo-liberal capitalism, continues to destroy people and the planet'. Recently, 72 people with the LPM were arrested after they launched a separate march that led to the offices of ANC Transvaal leader Mbhazima Shilowa.
Mangaliso Khubeka, the national organizing chief of the LPM, told the South African media, 'The [ANC] government is trying to destroy us, but actually they are giving us more power. If the government was doing the right thing for us we wouldn't be with La Via Campesina. What we are striving for is land. The people in Zimbabwe are getting land by taking it'. In 1994, the ANC promised to give 30 percent of South Africa's land to landless blacks by 1999. The LPM is calling for a 'land summit' in which a Zimbabwean-style land-reform program would be enacted by the ANC to hand over the land of white 'abusive farmers'. 'Can someone please define for me?' asked the representative of white farmers. 'That word can mean almost anything. Isn't anyone going to stand up against Mugabe and his admirers in South Africa?' ... Natasha deBoer, a Cape Town-based executive with dual citizenship in both the UK and South Africa, told WorldNetDaily she is not surprised at Mugabe's newfound popularity in South Africa. 'The whites in Cape Town live in a dream world. They have but a few years left of their fantasy of a normal life under communist black rule', she said.
'My father was in the British SAS. Almost 25 years ago he said that Mugabe was the . I find it positively shocking that Tony Blair and Colin Powell would protest Mugabe's murderous actions now ? this after the British Foreign Office and the U.S. State Department destroyed the white leadership of Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and put Mugabe into power in the first place. People should be asking what the master plan is in southern Africa. It certainly doesn't include whites'".
"Land-grab bug bites Zimbabwe neighbour September 17 2002
South Africa plans to redistribute about 30 per cent of land owned by white commercial farmers by 2015 and will expropriate farms where necessary, a Johannesburg newspaper has reported. The Business Report has quoted the director-general of land affairs, Gilingwe Mayende, as saying the Government would not apply the willing-seller, willing-buyer concept in its drive to address the problem of landlessness among the black majority. 'We do have a target of redistributing 30 per cent of all agricultural land in the country by the year 2015', Mr Mayende said".
"South Africa intervenes in Zimbabwe land grab crisis ... CAPE TOWN - South Africa intervened on behalf of its citizens caught up in Zimbabwe's controversial land grab yesterday. But the move was not enough to silence critics of President Thabo Mbeki who say his lack of action on the Zimbabwe crisis is a key factor behind the rand's slide".