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As reported in news.com.au, South Africa's Parliament have voted to "expropriate" land from white farmers with no compensation.
From TFA:
The motion was brought by Julius Malema, leader of the radical Marxist opposition party the Economic Freedom Fighters, and passed overwhelmingly by 241 votes to 83 against. The only parties who did not support the motion were the Democratic Alliance, Freedom Front Plus, Cope and the African Christian Democratic Party
...
"The time for reconciliation is over. Now is the time for justice," Mr Malema was quoted by News24 as telling parliament. "We must ensure that we restore the dignity of our people without compensating the criminals who stole our land."
...
Mr Malema has been leading calls for land confiscation, forcing the ANC to follow suit out of fear of losing the support of poorer black voters. In 2016, he told supporters he was "not calling for the slaughter of white people‚ at least for now"
This policy has been tried in other African countries before, most recently Zimbabwe, with disastrous results. The farms appropriated usually fail rapidly, leading to food shortages and economic destruction. Will South Africa be able to avoid repeating history, or is it about to slide into 3rd World status?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Wednesday February 28 2018, @05:55PM (14 children)
Sounds like you agree that it's going to be a cluster fuck. You already found someone to blame for it. The obvious rebuttal here is that South Africa's inability to see the consequences of these actions is not the UK's responsibility. Even if this fairy tale were somehow true, you still have the blatant problem that the UK has no reason to prioritize South African greed and avarice over British greed and avarice.
Come on. We already have Zimbabwe, Kenya, Haiti, and several other countries as examples. It's time the people causing these problems learn from experience.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by bob_super on Wednesday February 28 2018, @06:04PM (7 children)
> The obvious rebuttal
Oh come on! Make me drink before 10AM ?
> Sounds like you agree that it's going to be a cluster fuck.
No. I'm pointing out that one of the main reasons why Zimbabwe turned into a clusterfuck was the UK's actions. The locals didn't forget how to farm overnight. Splitting farms doesn't help productivity, but they lost access to lots of needed resources.
SA is big enough to avoid getting slapped like a third-world child, but Brexit is a good thing for their farmers, limiting the impact as the UK works to discretely undermine them, as could be expected given their "poor oppressed colonial land owner" knee-jerk history.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday February 28 2018, @06:21PM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @07:40PM (5 children)
Instead, it just might have happened that the locals appointed as new owners never knew how to farm?
To grab another's property, and to work one's own, is different skills. No need to invent conspiration theories.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 28 2018, @08:29PM (1 child)
Exactly. The new "owners" will be totally out of their element when engaged in any enterprise not involving the tried-and-true robbing and raping. They just might be able to operate a termite stick if trained properly, but if Zimbabwe is any indication, this is not about improving their society, it's just sticking it to the "man."
The truth is the racist's best friend and supporter.
(Score: 2) by ants_in_pants on Saturday March 03 2018, @05:04AM
where's the moderation option for "disgusting"
-Love, ants_in_pants
(Score: 4, Informative) by driverless on Thursday March 01 2018, @01:27AM (2 children)
I was cautiously optimistic that Ramaphosa, being a businessman, would Do The Right Thing, since SA's economy directly affects his own finances. Then I saw this...
They're fucked. This is national suicide, they'll go the same way as Zimbabwe did, for which the current joke is that there's no more rat problem there because that's what the population has been reduced to eating.
Oh God, they're fucked.
More detailed comments: Most of the SA farmers have military experience, while the current SA military mostly doesn't. So you've got highly experienced military personnel whose land will be taken by an inexperienced, largely incompetent army. You can guess how that will end up.
Even if they manage to take the land, it's going to degenerate into tribal warface when the Zulus want land given to Sesuthu, Tswana want land given to Venda, Ndebele want Xhosa land, and so on. It's going to be a bloodbath if they go through with this suicide plan.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01 2018, @01:55AM (1 child)
We're fucked. SA was one of the few places that could give hope to an increasingly problematic world. Now this...
(Score: 2) by driverless on Thursday March 01 2018, @02:18AM
It's just so depressing, like watching a train wreck in slow motion, one freeze frame at a time. You know before it even begins how it's going to end, but there's nothing you can do to stop it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01 2018, @02:27AM (4 children)
Hang on, let's check WHO pushed so hard since the 1960's for Rhodesia and the South Africa to have "free and fair elections." UK (and subsidiaries), USA and Europe - screaming at "those bloody racists" down there, while back home their own racism was rampant. Then these countries fell - "Zimbabwe" to the Chinese controlled Mugabe regime ... yeah, that worked out well. 10 million starving people in a country that pre-q980 could have fed the entire sub-Saharan Africa. And then rejoicing when South Africa changed (yes, some things NEEDED change), and the super-corrupt (communist) ANC era was ushered in. Significantly among the dignitaries at Nelson Mandela's swearing in as president were: the "Duck of Eden-burg" (this is how they read Charlie's name), along with M.Ghadaffi and several other such "new allies". And the circus unwound through the 90's, the Rand sliding from 1:1 with he US$ to R16 to a US$, and eventually you get to Zuma and his Indian ultra-corruption pals, the Guptas. The country is now SO run dry (the Guptas alone stole over R100 billion), they are getting around to stripping the last "assets", LAND. Note that Julius Malema is a far-left hard-line commie who makes Mao look like a Roman Catholic Saint. But then for most people SA fell out of the news after Mandela - they're now "fixed", the liberals are rejoicing and everything is guaranteed to be copascetic forever. Maybe it is time for couch experts to shuttup about affairs of countries they cannot even point out on a map.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 01 2018, @03:53AM (3 children)
So we should shut up about great evils in the world because we are not perfect moral beings? Hypocrisy is far from the worst evil ever. I get so sick and tired of people who will excuse great evils merely because the dude was "honest" (in practice, that usually means, had a great uniform or some other shtick).
[...]
There's a whole lot of stuff here I just don't see the reason to care about. I don't control the actions of the Chinese or the Indians (nor for that matter does the UK, USA, or Europe). So don't go whining to me (or those countries) about the bad people we didn't create or enable.
Good advice. But what about me?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01 2018, @07:41AM
Shut up, khallow! The obvious rebuttal is: He was talking about you!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday March 01 2018, @09:29AM (1 child)
Shouting about great evils of the world while practising evil yourself is worse than hypocrisy, it's idiotic.
You show you are aware of evil/non-evil distinction but you'll waste your time in shouting to others, over which you don't have control, and do nothing in areas under your control: yourself.
That's so typical you, authoritarian of the do-as-I-say-not-as-I-do kind - the worse kind there could be.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday March 01 2018, @03:21PM
You're doing it again. Evil is not a bit flag you set. The apartheid of South Africa of decades past is not equivalent to the weaker SJW racism of the developed world in recent times (or the older institutional racism that died out in the 1960s). Just because both are evil doesn't mean that they are equivalent evils. And if we won't do anything about the great evils of the world, because we commit minor evils ourselves, then who will?
At some point, perhaps you're realize that it is better for the imperfect to stop these great evils than to allow them to continue.
Except that it is not.
(Score: 2) by rondon on Friday March 02 2018, @11:25PM
Haiti became the place it is today because after the black slaves fought for their human rights, different groups of people appeared (over and over, I might add) who wanted to re-enslave them and re-institute the plantation system. This includes when Haitian blacks were declared free by a white Frenchman who had the authority to do so (Sonthonax). Once everyone realized that was a pipe dream, France then told them they owed something like 5,000% (perhaps more?) of their GDP for independence and recognition as a nation, and then re-enslaved them to banks instead of white and "colored" French people.
Taking the land away from the plantation owners (white, colored, black, or other) wasn't the reason the state failed. It failed because of the tendency toward autocracy combined with being shit on by every other nation. In fact, the US took over Haiti in 1915 and kept it for 20 damn years, only to make certain that Haiti WOULD NOT BE ALLOWED to default on their national debt, even as nearly every country in Europe had done so multiple times in their near history.
Haiti is a very, very poor state due to a mix of different complicated issues, the majority of which Haitians had no control over. Comparing them to the current issues is South Africa is disingenuous at best. I disagree with you often, but I usually respect the arguments you make as decently well researched. This time is very different.