South Africa’s ruling ANC Party plans to enforce a massive Zimbabwe-styled land grab after the Fifa 2010 World Cup Games, with Zimbabwe’s Zanu PF and War Veterans providing crucial support for the effort.
The Zimbabwe Mail report comes after this weekend’s savage murder of AWB leader Eugene Terreblanche, and two weeks of heightened tensions surrounding ANCYL leader Julius Malema’s repeated singing of the old ANC battle song, “Kill the Boer.”
ANCYL leader Julius Malema in Zimbabwe this past weekend
It is Malema who is setting up meetings between key ANC and Zimbabwe officials to organize logistical and mobilization plans for sporadic land invasions across South Africa. He also discussed and shared ideas on “youth empowerment and revolutionary tactics” with Zim officials.
Writes Zimbabwe Mail:
A member of the Zanu PF security department told our reporter that the basis of Malema’s visit to Harare is a follow up to a secret discussion between President Mugabe and his South African counterpart Jacob Zuma, three weeks ago.
The source said when South African President Jacob Zuma visited Zimbabwe during the coalition talks between Zanu PF and the MDC, he discussed at length, matters ranging from the British media’s personal attacks on his private life during the recent visit to the United Kingdom and the need to expedite South African land reform.
It is at this stage that Mugabe converted Zuma into his camp, and the two leaders agreed to join hands in actively assisting each other in the land reform and indigenisation process.
The Standard reports - Malema spoke publicly about the ANC expropriating South African mines, in addition to leading crowds in singing, “Kill the Boer.”
“We hear you are going straight for the mines, that is what we are going to do in South Africa,” Malema told a rally in the Zimbabwean capital Harare.
“They have exploited our minerals for a very long time. We want the mines, now it’s our turn.”
A high-level delegation in the South African security forces, intelligence and media with close links to the ANC are currently in Zimbabwe. They will spend three months training at the Zimbabwe National Army’s Staff College.
(pic right) Malema leads Zimbabwe Youth at rally
Senior Zimbabwe National army officers who led Zimbabwe’s land invasions will train their South African counterparts and impart knowledge based on their experiences.
Zanu PF Youth League national secretary for administration Leslie Ncube confirmed all of this in press conference with reporters, noting how his party and the ANC share the same goals dating back to their origins as Marxist revolutionaries fighting White rule in Africa. “We share the same revolutionary history and they (visiting delegates) are coming to learn from our agrarian reform and indigenisation,” Ncube said.
“The ANC is about to expand its land reforms, and we will share advice and discuss how resources should be equitably distributed to the youth and also how they can benefit from natural resources such as mining,” Ncube said.
Speaking to South African media, Gugule Nkwinti, the Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform accused white farmers of scuttling the land reform programme by frustrating government’s willing buyer willing seller policy through inflating prices.
He warned South Africa risks sinking into chaos as the patience of new black farmers is running thin as evidenced by sporadic farm invasions.
“If South Africans who own land don’t recognise the reality on the ground? and can no walk the mind with government in terms of what is proposed right now then in fact they are the ones who will be responsible for creating conditions of chaos which can be worse than what has been witnessed in Zimbabwe,” said Nkwinti.
Through its “willing buyer, willing seller” program, the ANC has set a goal of acquiring 80 million hectares of land by 2014. However, the world-wide economic downturn has drained budgets set aside for the program.
An effort to pass an Expropriation Bill which would have amended the South African constitution to allow a Zimbabwe-styled land grab was crushed, but Nkwinti has not ruled out a similar move in the future.
Nkwinti said just like in Zimbabwe where about 4000 white farmers owned most of the country’s arable land, land in South Africa is concentrated in the hands of a few land owners, most of whom are foreigners.
“We have a major monopoly of land ownership in South Africa and we must break that monopoly,” said Nkwinti.
Nkwinti earlier this month told parliament that the government was adopting a “use it or lose it” policy to encourage increased production capacity but his weekend comments appear to be a shift towards a more radical policy.
Last June, Nkwinti called for a new land reform model to replace the current “willing buyer, willing seller” program.
Source Url: http://www.therightperspective.org
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