Ixtab
03-15-2007, 07:56 PM
Racial Tension Crops Up
The bucolic valleys that produce South Africa’s best wines are also producing tension as white farmers are accused of forcing black workers from their homes.
Agriculture Minister Lulu Xingwana also charges farmers with abusing and intimidating workers. Incensed landowners say Miss Xingwana’s charges are exaggerated and risk stoking violence on farms and complicating the delicate path toward land reform.
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Unlike neighboring Zimbabwe, where white owners have been forced off the land by the government, in South Africa it is usually poor, illiterate blacks who are pushed away.
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Miss Xingwana reeled off examples she believes illustrate the mind-set of farmers: The farmer who escaped with a fine and suspended sentence for fatally shooting an 11 year-old-boy he claimed he mistook for a rabid dog; a farmer who shot a worker and said he thought it was a baboon; and the notorious case of a farmer who threw a former laborer alive into a lion-breeding enclosure.
Minister ‘outspoken’
“I cannot apologize for the truth,” said Miss Xingwana, who took over the land-affairs portfolio last year. Earlier, she had earned a reputation for outspokenness at the minerals and energy department when she criticized “lily-white” mining companies.
Farmers point out that they, too, are victims of violence.
Since 1991, there have been more than 9,600 attacks against farmers, including 1,560 killings, according to statistics collected by AgriSA. South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates in the world — about 50 people killed per day — and farmers say they feel particularly vulnerable because they often live in isolated areas.
The tension over land may be adding to their insecurity.
Kenneth Eva, a manager on a fruit farm in KwaZulu-Natal, was bludgeoned to death last month as he delivered an ultimatum to 250 black “squatters” to leave the land. They had refused, saying it did not rightfully belong to the white owner.
Another farm manager, Desmond Sterley, was found dead with a single bullet in the back of his head Feb. 5 on a stud farm near Worcester, 75 miles from Cape Town.
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http://washingtontimes.com/world/20070314-102520-9943r.htm
The bucolic valleys that produce South Africa’s best wines are also producing tension as white farmers are accused of forcing black workers from their homes.
Agriculture Minister Lulu Xingwana also charges farmers with abusing and intimidating workers. Incensed landowners say Miss Xingwana’s charges are exaggerated and risk stoking violence on farms and complicating the delicate path toward land reform.
{snip}
Unlike neighboring Zimbabwe, where white owners have been forced off the land by the government, in South Africa it is usually poor, illiterate blacks who are pushed away.
{snip}
Miss Xingwana reeled off examples she believes illustrate the mind-set of farmers: The farmer who escaped with a fine and suspended sentence for fatally shooting an 11 year-old-boy he claimed he mistook for a rabid dog; a farmer who shot a worker and said he thought it was a baboon; and the notorious case of a farmer who threw a former laborer alive into a lion-breeding enclosure.
Minister ‘outspoken’
“I cannot apologize for the truth,” said Miss Xingwana, who took over the land-affairs portfolio last year. Earlier, she had earned a reputation for outspokenness at the minerals and energy department when she criticized “lily-white” mining companies.
Farmers point out that they, too, are victims of violence.
Since 1991, there have been more than 9,600 attacks against farmers, including 1,560 killings, according to statistics collected by AgriSA. South Africa has one of the highest homicide rates in the world — about 50 people killed per day — and farmers say they feel particularly vulnerable because they often live in isolated areas.
The tension over land may be adding to their insecurity.
Kenneth Eva, a manager on a fruit farm in KwaZulu-Natal, was bludgeoned to death last month as he delivered an ultimatum to 250 black “squatters” to leave the land. They had refused, saying it did not rightfully belong to the white owner.
Another farm manager, Desmond Sterley, was found dead with a single bullet in the back of his head Feb. 5 on a stud farm near Worcester, 75 miles from Cape Town.
{snip}
http://washingtontimes.com/world/20070314-102520-9943r.htm