- HARARE - South African labour
minister, Membathisi Mdladlana, said in Zimbabwe on Friday that this country
had a lot to learn from President Robert Mugabe's programme of land reform.
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- The political opposition in South Africa has denounced
his remarks as "chilling".
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- Mdladlana said during a tour of farms that it was "important
that black people should also own land that they till, and know how to
produce food and be self-sufficient and sustainable".
-
- The South African Press Association (Sapa) also quoted
him as saying that South Africa had a lot to learn about land reform from
its neighbour.
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- His comments were trumpeted by Zimbabwe's state press
as strongly supportive of Mugabe's land seizures, which are widely seen
as the primary cause of the country's current famine.
-
- An estimated eight million of Zimbabwe's 13 million people
are threatened with starvation, according to the UN and other international
bodies.
-
- The black farmers being resettled by Mugabe's Zanu-PF
party have not been given title to the land, which remains in the hands
of the state.
-
- The Democratic Alliance (DA) opposition said Mdladlana's
"support for Zanu-PF's land redistribution programme is chilling".
-
- Its land affairs representative, Andries Botha, said:
"President Mugabe and Zanu-PF's violent and unconstitutional 'redistribution
at all costs' programme has resulted in the complete collapse of Zimbabwe's
agrarian-dominated economy.
-
- "This hardly sounds like the example South Africa
should be following."
-
- The editor of the newspaper Zimbabwe Independent, Iden
Wetherell, said: "The South African labour minister allowed himself
to be led around by Zimbabwean officials."
-
- "They took him to a few showcase schemes purporting
to prove that the land redistribution programme has been a success... when
it is patently clear that the systematic destruction of Zimbabwe's agricultural
sector has been catastrophic."
-
- Since South Africa's transition to democracy in 1994,
the ANC government has pursued a cautious land reform programme.
-
- President Thabo Mbeki has said that land invasions will
never take place.
-
- Even so, Mr Mdladlana's words will exacerbate the fear
that some in the South African government sympathise with Zanu-PF.
-
- South Africa is tackling land reform in two ways: it
is assessing claims from people who say they were unfairly forced off their
land under apartheid and it is distributing state and other land to formerly
disadvantaged communities.
-
- The government's land programme got off to a slow start,
and only 7% of land earmarked for redistribution has been transferred.
The process has accelerated in the past three years, however.
-
- Last year the director general of the government's department
of land affairs, Gilingwe Mayende, told a newspaper that white farmers
supported land reform and were voluntarily offering land for redistribution
to landless black people.
-
- South Africa would not follow Zimbabwe's example, he
added. The support of landowners would help the government to redistribute
30% of agricultural land to landless communities by 2015.
-
- Carl Opperman of Agri Wes-Cape, a farmers' organisation,
said he was surprised by Mdladlana's remarks.
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- Farmers in the Cape had drawn up extensive plans for
reform, given them to the government, and were now waiting for a response.
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- "We are waiting for government to put money into
land reform," he said. - Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers
Limited 2001 http://www.mg.co.za/Content/l3.asp?ao=9988&t=1
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