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South Africa threatens to evict Whites
Posted: Monday, August 21, 2006
By Linda Edwards
All countries where land was alienated from the indigenous inhabitants for the benefit of Europeans should follow the example of Zimbabwe, and either force the farmers to agree to a fair price for their ill-gotten gains; fair being what the government determines the land is worth, or confiscate the land outright, paying a minimal sum in compensation. The enormous profits they already made could keep them in hock for three or four generations.
Wherever Europeans have lived for the last four hundred or so years, in places where they are not the indigenous people, they have prospered at the expense of the original inhabitants. Leave out the glaring example of the West Indies where the indigenes were wiped out, and replaced by two types of subject people - enslaved Africans and indentured Indians - powerless people out of their native habitat, and kept suppressed. Look instead at the Americas, Africa and Australia. The Indigenes - whether they were Aboriginals, Bantus Chippewas, or Inuit are the poorest people in their countries. This is not because they are lazy, but because their lands were forcibly taken from them and given to whites, and they were driven off to the most inhospitable plots in the remotest areas. Thus, good farming land became good white people's land.
Zimbabwe led the way in forced repatriation of lands. South Africa, six years ago, said it was not planning to go that route. Now they have come face to face with the stubbornness of white planters who grow commercial crops that do not feed hungry people, like we used to grow sugar in Trinidad. Babies cannot be fed tobacco.
It is time that these former colonial subject-countries, be they English, Dutch, French, Portuguese or Spanish meet and formulate a joint policy on re-acquisition of land. Sometimes, when individual states act alone, the price of the land is jacked up beyond their government's capacity to acquire it. Thus perpetuation of a white plantocracy and impoverished non-whites is possible, until this seems so much the norm that no one questions it, except a few who are deemed "radicals".
When individual leaders, like Castro, Chavez and the one who "lost" the election in Mexico speak out, they are condemned by the G8 countries, who like things as they are: small Europe and The US controlling large blocks of land in other people's countries.
The two economies that most effectively threw off the shackles of colonialism - China and India, were too large, geographically, for these small European countries to get a stranglehold on the land. In other areas where they were successful; the government MUST acquire the land for its landless poor. It was the landless poor of Europe who brought about revolution.
Revolution now must come from governments acting on behalf of the world's poor.
Structural poverty continues to be a major source of conflict, because in most cases, the haves got theirs at the expense of the have-nots. They want to keep the have-nots begging for a handout. The beggar at the gate makes some people feel good. Keep them quiet with a few pennies. Too many beggars at the gate can break the gate down, then the rich man had better watch out.
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