Bulletin issued by the Transvaal Agricultural Union With the world focused on the antics of Africa’s newest dictator Robert Mugabe, it is perhaps not surprising that the South African government has apparently succumbed to pressure and has temporarily halted its intention to ram the Land Expropriation Bill through Parliament.
The government has badly misjudged not only South African opinion but world sentiment around the wholesale grabbing of productive land. World food hunger is no longer something that happens to other countries - as South Africa is a net importer of some crucial staples, what is happening around the globe could even jeopardize the ANC government’s hold on power, something the party has always taken for granted.
More than 2 000 residents of the Ugandan town Lokali fought and scrambled to collect World Food Program (WFP) aid one Saturday last month. Some received bags of corn or beans, and the WFP rations dwindled. Guarding this small food stash, “police clutch assault rifles to scare off bandits”, says Time magazine, “as well as sticks to beat recipients who try to steal. With just a few sacks remaining, thieves and the needy rush the stash. The officers thrash them all - old women and children too - until they drop the sacks and scatter”.
Extreme hunger is now ”shockingly common”, says the WFP. It plans this year to feed about 90 million people in 78 countries, and almost all the recipients “hover on the brink of starvation”. In the north east of Uganda, food distribution is now “a daily ritual”. Law and order has broken down and armed cattle rustlers roam the region making the roads too dangerous for deliveries.
The world is facing a perfect storm - droughts and floods resulting in dramatic price increases, huge oil price hikes, and the ubiquitous population explosion. Television pictures of Ethiopia and Darfur show women with many, many children, this when the world is teetering on the brink of serious famine.
The South African government should realize it is living in a continent which skates on thin ice, and any tampering with South Africa’s food supply will be catastrophic. The fact that the government even introduced the land grab legislation shows how abysmally ignorant - or willfully negligent - they are. The fat - literally - cats who occupy the corridors of SA government power could see their dream of “power forever” explode into serious unrest and calls for heads to roll if food is not available for every table in South Africa.
Many ask on what grounds does the black population now demand land to the extent that it does? Nearly all farms in Limpopo province, for example, are under claim. How do these claimants know who occupied what in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries? It is obvious that the government also doesn’t know, otherwise it would have found legislation prior to the 1913 Land Act upon which to base it’s supporters’ claims. Must the commercial farming sector now pay for the population explosion that took place in South Africa under the stewardship of European settlers?
POPULATION GROWTH
Eric Rosenthal’s Encyclopedia of Southern Africa refers to a census in 1753 when there were 5 510 whites and 6,279 slaves. When whites arrived in South Africa in 1652, there was no productive farming to speak of. Subsistence agriculture may have existed in parts of the country, but in many areas there were few or no blacks. The Encyclopedia Britannica of 1911 under the section Transvaal says: “In 1904, the first population census of the old Transvaal revealed there were 297 277 whites and 937,127 non-whites in that region. Of these non-whites, some 135 042 were not from the Transvaal but were only on the Witwatersrand “to work in the gold and other mines and thus only 77% of all blacks at the time were actually born there.”
Continues the Britannica: “There were 314 797 blacks in the Zoutpansberg and other northern districts. These people belonged to the Bantu race and none of them has any claim to be indigenous and, save the Bavenda, all are immigrants since circa 1817 - 1820 when the greater part of the then inhabitants were exterminated by the Zulu chief Mozilikatze (see History).”
So even if the government intends canvassing votes by giving people land, given today’s population, this policy could never fulfill the government’s goal of redistribution of the land to “the people”. There are simply too many of them and not enough land.
The commercial farming is now the victim of a burgeoning population which, until 1913, did not possess a system of delineating land for ownership. Now however, they are claiming land which may or may not have “belonged” to their ancestors simply because there was no system of written and recorded tenure until the European settlers arrived in South Africa.
With this arrival came a population explosion which is now the impetus behind the SA government’s demand for land. It is ironic that European settlement in South Africa in effect created the documented basis for claims against those very same European settlers.
The concept of a census is not generic to Africa, nor was it generic to South Africa’s black peoples as they came down from Central Africa and met European settlement. The first official census in South Africa was taken in the Cape of Good Hope in 1865. Fifteen years later, in 1880, the first census was taken in the Orange Free State. In the Transvaal and Natal, the first censuses were in 1890 and 1891, and the first composite census of the whole of South Africa was taken in 1904.
Up until then, who could empirically claim land? While blacks settled and wandered in large areas centuries ago, who can claim what? On what basis? No accurate figures regarding the early stages of South Africa’s history are available. If the Department of Land Affairs (DLA) had figures, they would surely have presented them as bases of their claim that land “belonged” to certain clans or families. The DLA thus had to rely on the Land Acts of 1913, which was a European concept, nor an African one.
Population grew exponentially - in 1975 there were 18 million blacks, 4,2 million Whites, 2.4 million Coloureds and 0,7 million Indians.
Over the past twenty or so years, the white population has not grown. Since 1994, the white population has decreased. The 1976 South African Yearbook predicted that the white population would be 6,6 million in the year 2000, and 8,7 million in 2020. As we all know, this has not happened. The number of farmers has decreased, as has the general white population. This Year Book shows population graphs representing the four population groups. They are each more or less equal triangles, thinning at the top as the population of each group ages. In 2007, however, the SA Institute of Race Relations Annual Survey produced similar population graphs- what is unnerving is the white population graph - it is out of sync - there is a large dent in the middle - ages 25 to 39, male and female. This group is palpably smaller than it should be, and the only logical conclusion is that these people have emigrated.
These people are the future, but they are not here.
The number of producers in South Africa has fallen drastically, while the number of consumers has burgeoned out of all proportion. Enough of a fact to give the government pause, one would think. Certainly enough of a fact to give the business community a reason to ruminate - a small coterie of farmers feeding an ever-growing population, a large chunk of future leaders and doers missing, and a government ready to take what land is available for production to give to their voters, most of whom don’t want to farm anyway.
No wonder South Africa is up in arms. Our food future is at the precipice - the Expropriation Bill should be placed in File 13, and plans should be afoot to nurture South Africa’s food security in light of the global hunger knocking at our door.
