Hiding the Truth: Things about Farming you never knew

Original Post Date: 2002-04-07  Posted By: Jan

From the News Archives of: WWW.AfricanCrisis.Org
Date & Time Posted: 4/7/2002 2:01:49 AM
Hiding the Truth: Things about Farming you never knew

Hi Everyone,
I’m back from my week off. It was something I had originally planned for January, until that sudden and abortive trip to New York came up. So I had booked tickets for a flight to Umtata where my nephew, Richard, picked us up and took us to the small Eastern Cape village/town of Ugie where he lives.

It was good to be away a bit just to get a break. I’m feeling a lot fresher and keener to get on with things.

SOUTH AFRICA – CRIME CESSPOOL
I was able to get a replacement cell phone for the one which was stolen. While on holiday, I got a call from a black detective. He gave me the case number for my mugging. He told me that the gang who robbed me outside the Carlton Centre in broad daylight had committed about 50 crimes in the centre of Johannesburg and Fordsburg. He said they were very professional. He said one man had been robbed of R1,500!!! I was lucky. I am always careful to carry very little cash on me so they only got R6 and my wallet. But they got my cell phone. I was lucky – consider this – my cell phone contract (of 2 years) expired on 15th March and I was robbed just 13 days later. I had been given the opportunity of upgrading to get a new cell phone – but did not use it. So they stole my old phone. So I merely renewed my contract, got a new phone and a free replacement sim card (because I had reported the matter to the police) and I was Ok. No financial loss.

The Detective asked me if I’d recognised my assailants and I said no. He agreed that according to accounts from others the entire process takes a FEW SECONDS. I’d say the entire incident was about 5 seconds – maybe a bit more.

Being surrounded by several black men standing in a neat circle (which hides events from others passing by) while having two knives held against one (from what I could see) sure draws your attention away from their faces. I was more busy watching the knives than worrying about what they looked like.

Resisting robbers in South Africa can be a very dangerous thing. They kill you easily and remember there’s no death penalty. Even the Police are NOT allowed to shoot at fleeing suspects – even if they are armed. And if a suspect has a knife you are not allowed to use a gun against him – it is AGAINST THE LAW – even for Police.

While I was on holiday in the Eastern Cape, Richard pointed out a small shop where two white women had been gunned down by robbers. One died, the other was wounded. Richard told me that according to accounts the women had been cheeky when the black armed robbers had entered the store and demanded money. For their cheek, they were shot. So resistence is dangerous.

Businesses in Johannesburg have put up cameras all over the city centre which are monitored 24 hours a day. The Detective told me that the camera monitoring the spot where I had been, was defective and they had checked it already and couldn’t make out anything which would help them to capture the muggers.

I had someone housesit while I was away. I was very worried about leaving my house unattended.

We had a pleasant flight to Umtata. But when we got our luggage we saw that although we had put small padlocks on our suitcases, that the lock on my mother’s suitcase had been broken off. It later turned out that one pair of her slacks and two books had been stolen!!

That’s South Africa for you. They steal from you at every twist and turn if you are not careful. Its pointless complaining. I always make a point of packing my worst clothes and NEVER taking anything of real value with me so that even if my entire suitcase were to go missing it would contain nothing of significance.

Another sign of the crime in South Africa can be seen in the old suburb of Ferndale where I used to live. The person who house-sat for me, lives there. They are in the process of blocking off one of the roads there (with a fence) and setting up a boom with a security guard so that part of the suburb is accessible only from one road. Apparently they had had a number of car hijackings there recently.

According to the Police, who gave residents a lecture on security, you must drive with your doors locked and windows closed so no one can put their hand inside to open your door. And when confronted with hijackers the Police recommend that you blow your hooter as much as possible as it will draw attention to you and scare them off.

Here’s a joke for you. As I got back today I saw a newspaper headline which said that Johannesburg city council had budgetted a staggering R8 million to promote “good news” about the city!!! Here we are in a crime cesspool – one of the worst crime spots IN THE WORLD – and they decide that the best way to deal with the situation IS TO HIDE THE TRUTH!!! (How about the common sense approach of getting more Police, tightening the laws and getting the criminal trash off the streets? Nah! Their approach, just like that of our President, is to LIE ABOUT THE SITUATION INSTEAD!!!!)

So they have budgetted all this money to put a smiley face on crime-ridden Johannesburg instead of solving the problem.

On the day we left Ugie, we heard that in this small village of maybe 300 white people, that a black man had been in someone’s house and held a knife to a black maid’s throat. Apparently she screamed and he ran away. There is a nearby township of several thousand blacks – so he just melted away into the masses…

FARMING – SOME PERSONAL OBSERVATIONS.
Our enemies are always saying WE STEREOTYPE – but, who stereotypes more than THEY DO? They keep saying: Whites came to Africa and stole from blacks and whites took the best farmland and gave the trash to the blacks. All whites are supposed to be thieves, etc.

Well, hold on, let me make some personal observations and tell you folks some things you do not know and enlighten you. Most of what you hear about whites in Africa is badly twisted and often has a socialist slant on it (the horrible rich whites oppressing all the poor innocent blacks).

As we watch Zimbabwe collapse and die north of us, we have madmen here in South Africa who talk of “land reform” and of taking away white farmland and giving it at the soonest to the “landless blacks”.

Let’s talk about Zimbabwe and South Africa, and remind you of the MANY FACTS WHICH OUR ENEMIES CHOOSE TO IGNORE. The WHOLE TRUTH, you see, would not be good for them, so they like to twist things to suit their political purposes, to engage in MASS THEFT from white people.

So let me throw a number of things your way to put things in a greater perspective and to remind you of the many MANY good things white people did in Africa.

On my trip I took many photos. I took some especially to show some of you folks the reality of South Africa. When I went on my little holiday I never expected to turn it into a fact-finding mission – and yet, so many things presented themselves that I thought I’d avail of the opportunity to show you folks a side of South Africa YOU WOULD NEVER SEE ANYWHERE. I’ll develop the photos this week and if they look good, I will write them up and put them on my website at: www.AfricanCrisis.org to supplement my ever popular photo gallery.

Let me give you a simplistic sketch of South Africa as a country. Firstly, South Africa is not in its natural form, a country suited to farming. The fact that South Africa is an African farming power-house is NOT due to its fertile soils or to wonderful benefits bestowed upon it. It is due, rather, to extensive and intelligent development mostly by the white people who have lived here for 400 years.

Myth #1, the Whites got the best soil. Bull. The history of South Africa, going back centuries, shows that blacks entered the north of South Africa at about the same time that whites arrived in the south by sea. Prior to that, Bushmen lived in South Africa. Bushmen are not black people. Bushmen are hunters. They don’t farm at all. They are a primitive people who hunt and dig up roots. That’s what they lived from. So they had no interest in agriculture.

The blacks who arrived in South Africa were either hunters or fishermen or they had herds of cattle which they lived from. Blacks never were all that interested in agriculture. At best they engaged in subsistence agriculture which works like this: they move to an area, chop down the trees, grow crops for a few years (with the crops getting worse each year). Then they move to a new area and repeat the process. Blacks never sat on one piece of soil and tried to improve its fertility. Blacks were migratory.

South Africa’s interior has a low rainfall and much of it is SEMI ARID, and the Western segments of South Africa are decidedly DESERT. Whites FARM EVERYWHERE – EVEN IN THE DESERT. You won’t see blacks farming in the desert – but you’ll see white farms there – in places with very little rainfall – places which look a lot like the Moon it is so barren. Trust me – I’ve been there – I wouldn’t live there even if your forced me at gunpoint – yet there are whites who make a good living by farming with sheep and goats in what is essentially a desert – where you have to keep your wits about you to survive.

Whites migrated into the interior of South Africa. And this part as I say is semi-arid. Guess what – the blacks lived there once – but the blacks moved away to the coast. The coast, Natal, is nice and green, has high rainfall, etc. That’s where most of the blacks moved to. What aided white migration into the interior was the slaughter of blacks in the interior by the Zulus who lived on the coast. The Zulus wiped out othe blacks who lived in the interior and thus large parts of the interior of South Africa were uninhabited. Whites moved in there and started farming – in this flat, semi-arid land. And the whites were quite happy with their lot.

The idea that the whites just took all the best land for themselves and gave the blacks the scraps is rubbish. Much of this land was just bush – and intelligent farming methods improved the land. So sure, now there are very productive farms in South Africa, but do not think this just fell into the whites’ laps.

Now let me tell you something more specific from my little holiday (for which I want to show you photos). We flew from Johannesburg to Umtata which took us over the interior of South Africa, the south eastern Transvaal to be exact, then over the Drakensburg mountains (in which you will find the independant black country of Lesotho) and then on to Umtata which is the capital of the Transkei. Now the Transkei, under Apartheid was an independant homeland, in other words, in the eyes of the Apartheid government, the Transkei was an independant COUNTRY – with its own army, government, police, parliament, RULED BY BLACKS. It was officially not a part of South Africa.

Ugie, which I went to, lies in “old South Africa”, just over the border from the Transkei.

All this background is important because there are a number of things I want to explain.

As an aside, I want to tell you of a personal experience I had. In 1993, when whites still ruled South Africa, Transkei was still regarded as an independant BLACK COUNTRY (CREATED BY APARTHEID – note there were several such nations). That same nephew of mine, Richard, got married in 1993. I wanted to fly down for the wedding. When I booked my flight, the travel agent said I did not need a passport because Transkei was a part of South Africa. When I got to the airport the stopped me from boarding my flight. I was turned back. I was told at Johannesburg airport I could not fly to Umtata because, officially, it is an independant country and I need a passport. I did not have one so I could not go. I had to have my ticket refunded and I missed Richard’s wedding.

So now picture in your mind 4 areas I travelled over and through: Transvaal, Drakensburg mountains, Transkei and back into “old South Africa”.

So we took off from Johannesburg and the plane headed south east. As is my habit, I always get a window seat and from the time we take off until we land (1 1/2 hours later), I watch the scenery go by beneath us.

As soon as Johannesburg receded I saw farms everywhere. I had never flown over this region before. As far as I could see, I saw the flat, featureless, reddy-brown, semi-arid Transvaal below me. I saw farms everywhere – white commercial farms. They had large fields and one could see the characteristic homestead surrounded by a few fields and some barns. The rest of the farm was composed of cultivated fields. Often one saw dams and large “crop circles” formed by large circular irrigation sprays. As we flew on, for the next 40 minutes, I saw farms everywhere, as far as the eye could see. No black townships, just white commercial farms everywhere.

Then the Drakensburg mountains approached (and the small black country of Lesotho). Suddenly the white commercial farms stopped. Nothing. Flying at 20,000 ft (above sea level), I could make out the round black huts and small villages beneath the plane. Sometimes one would see small fields scratched out near the huts but nothing approaching the size of the white commercial farms.

The farming in Lesotho was negligible. The most impressive bit of agriculture I saw there was on my return trip when I saw one mountain bordering on a black village where one could see nice terraced fields. But other than that one example there was little of note.

Then the Drakensburg mountains receded and the countryside became flatter once more – and greener. None of the semi-arid, dry reddy-browns of the Transvaal – now instead beautiful rolling GREEN countryside everywhere. The Transkei is beautiful.

I looked for commercial farms but there were NONE. The Transkei is much more populous – black huts and brick houses EVERYWHERE spread across beautiful rolling green hills. I saw forests of trees on the mountainsides (the first forests I had seen since leaving Johannesburg an hour before).

We landed in Umtata and then started the journey through it and eventually into the Eastern Cape where Ugie is. As we journeyed through the Transkei we saw black dwellings almost everywhere – huts, brick houses, etc. But we saw very little farming. Every now and then we would see a house with a small field of maize behind it. We saw cattle and goats owned by the blacks grazing everywhere but very little sign of cultivation. This is the point where I need the photos to show you. The countryside was lovely. As an ex-Farmboy myself, I know how to plough a field, and the first thing one looks for are obstacles to ploughing like trees and ROCKS. NONE. The lovely gentle, rolling green hills were totally devoid of rocks. The black dwellings often had enormous distances between them and miles and miles of lovely farmland – with nothing but grass on it. No sign of it ever having been cultivated.

We stopped and took photos. This beautiful green countryside with so many opportunities for farming – this is the supposed RUBBISH given to the blacks by the former white government.

And there is little excuse for it not being cultivated. It turns out that as with so much of Africa, this is COMMUNAL PROPERTY. Let us discuss this for a moment. Across Africa, whites did indeed take land – but they also set up “Reservations” for blacks. These went by different names. Sometimes they were called, by the British “Tribal Trust Lands” (TTLS), or in South Africa “Homelands”. These are different names for the same thing. A piece of land was demarcated and given to a tribe. It was normally land which the tribe had owned by tradition. They had lived there before the whites came and they still had it. No one black owned land there. It was communal land. So if you were a member of a tribe which owned it, you could build a house ANYWHERE YOU WANTED. No title deeds. Just build your house and live there. And if you want to farm, you farm. You don’t need to buy land to farm – you just go and grab a piece of land nobody is using and you till the soil plant your crops and off you go – IF YOU WANT. Some blacks do. But most DO NOT. Most don’t want to be peasants any more. They prefer to have jobs and to earn money so they leave the TTLS/Homelands and go and work cities. Many work in cities and build their houses in their homelands and leave their families there.

But the key point here is that the blacks CAN FARM IF THEY WANT TO. They always could. But mostly THEY ARE NOT INTERESTED IN FARMING WITH CROPS. Animals require less work, so they prefer to keep cattle and goats because that’s a simpler. Just leave the cattle to wander around – ditto for the goats and they have young. CROP FARMING REQUIRES A LOT OF EFFORT, A LOT OF PLANNING, ETC. White people have often gone in for this trickier form of farming they have largely monopolised it in Africa.

Let me tell you something. The black country of Zambia, which borders on Zimbabwe, is LARGER THAN FRANCE – much larger – and they once only had 23 white commercial farmers there. Those 23 white commercial farmers fed the entire country!! In recent years, they BEGGED WHITE FARMERS TO COME THERE – and there are now about 250 white farmers there – most from South Africa. Gabon and Mozambique are two other black countries offering all sorts of incentives to WHITE FARMERS FROM SOUTH AFRICA to go there and start commercial farms. WHY? Because white commercial farmers are skilled.

Now let me tell you something about Zimbabwe you probably did not know – and this very possibly applies to South Africa too. In Zimbabwe, subsistence farming is a common practise. And subsistence farming RUINS THE LAND. Subsistence farming is sometimes referred to as: “Slash and burn” agriculture because that is essentially what it is.

Why are white farms more productive than black farms? Well, white farmers put fertilizer in the soil, watch the alkaline levels and they rotate crops, etc. Now let me ask you a question: Has anyone ever thought that black TRIBAL/HISTORICAL farming methods DESTROY THE LAND and that is why tribal lands are now so poor whereas whites took land – any land – and improved on it over the decades. How much of the “good farm land” is due to white farming methods and how much of the “bad farm land” is due to the blacks RUINING IT??? Think about that!!! Think about that before always just falling for the line that “The Whites STOLE THE BEST LAND”.

If the whites stole all the good land in South Africa, or Zimbabwe, then why aren’t the blacks all holed up in the semi-arid and outright desert? Why are the whites the main people farming these regions? The south of Zimbabwe is semi-arid – and yet you will find lots of cattle ranches there owned by whites. Go and see where the black TTLS are – they are NOT in the worst parts of the country by climate. Ditto for South Africa. Black TTLS/Homelands WERE DETERMINED BY HISTORY and not by the whim of some white man who always stole everything that was good. The whites took some pretty shitty places – places which are just like Arizona (which as I understand is a desert or semi-desert) and the whites lives there – and are quite happy with it.

Blacks along the coast of South Africa live in some of the most scenic, beautiful and potentially productive farmland in the country. Whites took the semi-arid hinterland (long before Gold was even discovered or hinted at). Think about these things before falling for all the anti-white propaganda.

So we continued through the beautiful Transkei. Then we came to the old border between the Transkei and South Africa. All through the Transkei we saw no white farms. But at the border we saw white commercial farms once more. But we had been heading further and further away from the coast all the time and clearly there was LESS RAINFALL HERE. In fact, as we travelled, we were reaching the foot of the Drakensburg mountains once more. We saw rocky hills everywhere – boulders on hillsides – places you could not plough if you wanted to. But here were white farms in abundance. White farms stretched into the mountains – mountains with steep slopes – mountains which were impassable but for a few dirt roads. Some days later we drove quite deep into the mountains. But even there you saw white farms. In little valleys and on some exposed slopes you saw fields – you saw grass being bailed, cattle walking around on steep slopes.

The bottom line, from what I saw was that the whites made use of every piece of land they could. If the slopes were too steep or too rocky to plough they farmed with cattle.

There were some places I saw cattle where I wondered to myself how on earth the cattle actually got there and how they would get out. I was amazed at the places I saw cattle grazing.

That little trip, from the Transvaal, over the Drakensburg, through the Transkei and into the Eastern Cape showed me clearly that the whites farmed whereever they WERE ALLOWED TO. They would of course have loved to farm in the Transkei but there were practical reasons why they didn’t.

Firstly, as we drove the long distance through the Transkei, most of what we saw was Communal Land – meaning blacks could live and farm there BUT WHITES WERE NOT ALLOWED TO!!!

There is a further consideration when farming in Africa which none of these commentatory mention because it is not Politically Correct – because they prefer to live in a mythical, hypothetical world rather than reality.

THEFT IS A BIG PROBLEM – EVERYWHERE IN AFRICA. THEFT CAN DESTROY COMMERCIAL AGRICULTURE. Farmers who go to Zambia, Gabon, Mozambique, etc struggle not only with a backward infrastructure but with THEFT. Many go bankrupt and give up due to theft alone!

Theft affects farming and reduces the chances of making the BEST USE of farmland. For example, in the Eastern Cape where I was, sheep farming is more profitable than cattle farming, but they are forced into cattle farming because the losses from the theft of sheep are greater. Sheep are easier to steal. Firstly, do you know that if you slit a sheep’s throat it will not make a noise. Because sheep die silently they are often killed and then stolen. Also because they are smaller they are easier to just round up and load on a small truck and cart off.

So farmers instead farm with cattle. In fact, there are breeds of cattle which have been bred in Africa which, to my knowledge, don’t exist anywhere else. These breeds have been created by white commercial farmers in Africa. Here in South Africa, I stand under correction, but I think the Brahman is a local breed of cow. Of special interest is that they are BAD TEMPERED, and this is why the white farmers who live near the Transkei like to keep them. Because they are bad tempered they are harder to steal.

The effects of theft play themselves out in Africa to a greater extent than you would think. For example, if blacks steal maize, then farmers might stop growing maize and instead farm with some other crop which is not as susceptible to theft. I’ve heard of farmers growing grass or very specialised forms of grasses which have no value to the blacks but which they can still make money with.

I grew up on a farm in Rhodesia/Zimbabwe and I can tell you that theft is a major headache. You end up locking away everything. What you can’t lock up or tie down gets stolen. It becomes a very irritating thing.

Another fact of life in Africa which makes farming hell is trespassing. You might think this is nothing. Who would you find walking across your property? Well, in Africa, borders and boundaries and fences mean nothing. In Zimbabwe we had well-worn paths everywhere across all the farms as blacks move whereever they want to. The problem is they break fences – cattle then end up getting lost or running onto a public road. Then there’s theft. You have all sorts of people wandering across your farm and things go missing. You have no ability to stop people so you just live with it – but thieves could be scouting out what you have and so forth.

I remember once walking into a maize field and finding blacks happily helping themselves to our maize. I caught them once – but most times you never do – you just harvest and then discover that they’ve been inside stealing your crops.

There are a number of points I wanted to make:
(1) Its a blatant lie to just paint all whites as thieves and to say whites took everything of the best for themselves and gave the blacks nothing.
(2) When they talk of “land reform” and they rush off after white commercial farmland, remember, there are miles upon miles of farmland available to them to use – some of it better than the white farmland – and perhaps they should first make proper use of that white farmland BEFORE hunting down the whites and destroying what they built up.

Finally, farming is not easy. But it is something of a tradition among whites in Africa. In South Africa it is common practise for people to make money in business and to then engage in “gentleman farming” – to buy up farms, to plough capital into them and to retire and to farm for the remainder of their lives. Many whites aspire to leaving the city and to farming. I have a cousin for example, who made money with his engineering business. He then bought a farm and ploughed enormous amounts of money into it, trying to get a dairy going and engaging in game farming. This was what he aspired to in life.

My nephew is doing some part-time farming – experimenting with cattle on the one hand and chickens on the other.

I saw a lovely chicken farm during my visit. One sees a LOT OF HARD WORK, a lot of planning and thinking going into farming on the part of whites as they try all sorts of farming.

WHY SHOULD THESE PEOPLE BE PREVENTED FROM ACHIEVING SUCCESS FOR ALL THEIR HARD WORK AND THEIR EFFORTS? They are doing nobody any harm. They are feeding the country and if their ideas work then they end up employing blacks to work for them.

There around Ugie I also saw lots of forestry. Pine trees are not indigenous to Africa – and all our trees here grow too slowly. So imagine driving through Africa and seeing miles upon miles of Pine forests along mountain slopes! One paper mill bought up huge tracts of land and planted forests of pine trees as far as the eye could see. And they did a nice job of it too. Many of the pine trees were still quite small. I noticed poles dotted over all the forests of smaller trees. Upon enquiring why these poles were there, my nephew told me that there were falcons and other birds of prey in the region and they did not have trees large enough to perch on to look for rats and other small prey so the forestry company had put up these poles everywhere until the pine trees were large enough for the birds to perch on.

I also saw strips of cloth hanging off of telephone wires. My nephew told me that there was a certain type of rare bird in the region and they often flew into telephone wires because they could not see them – so they hung strips of cloth off the wires so the birds would avoid the wires.

This, then, is a view of RESPONSIBLE DEVELOPMENT in Africa, based on tried-and-tested methods instead of the maniacal approach advocated by power-hungry Marxist maniacs like Mugabe – and to be emulated in South Africa at some time in the future.

I have yet to see a truly logical argument as to why white farmers in southern Africa must be driven off their land. They are responsible, productive, intelligent and they do good things for the country – not to mention that they employ large numbers of blacks. A white farmer who was recently murdered in South Africa had a large farm and employed 1,000 blacks! Now he’s dead. In what way does that help black people?

Each black person employed on a farm normally supports about 4 or 5 other people. So think of the ripple effect of killing off and destroying even a small number of white farmers.

If blacks are so keen on farming, there is lots of land available to them for them to try their hand at it – rather than running some white farmer off the land.

Commercial farming is the only farming which makes sense. Let those blacks who want to engage in true commercial farming learn the ropes and engage in it just like the whites do. Give them loans based on ability and let them compete in the same market just as the whites do. There are small numbers of black commercial farmers in Zimbabwe and South Africa – let their numbers grow.

Many people in my family are/were farmers – in both Zimbabwe and South Africa and farming is not easy. It takes a lot of skill and planning. As I travelled around Ugie, my nephew pointed out a farm. He told me the largest farmer in that region was actually a Jewish guy – a former nuclear scientist who had now turned to farming and was extremely successful at it. He had two farms. One in that region with cattle and another in Upington (which is virtually a desert) where he had sheep.

Some years ago my mother had very serious eye problems and ended up blind in one eye. Her vision was saved by an Afrikaans Eye Specialist who had his own eye clinic in Johannesburg. He used to specialise in laser surgery and regularly went to the USA to catch up on the latest techniques. He was rated as one of the two top opthalmic surgeons in South Africa. He was another example of a successful person who turned his skills to farming. He also owned a large farm and later died in a plane accident on his farm.

The politicians who think they can just run whites off land and replace them with ignorants who have no experience or knowledge are insane. It takes a lot of skill, and a lot of capital to make a success of farming. A lot of these white commercial farmers are very bright resourceful people. But nobody ever gives them credit for the good they do. Many of them are world-class material.

I remember that in Mazoe, in Zimbabwe, at a research station, that in the 1970’s, they set a WORLD RECORD for maize yield per acre. To put it in perspective, if you just do slash and burn, as the blacks do, you get about 5 bags of maize per acre in your first year. With no fertilizer you will get less and less each year. The average white commercial farmer used to get 20 bags per acre – sometimes more. At Mazoe, scientists got 110 bags per acre – a WORLD RECORD!

So how are these ignoramus politicians going to match that? Even if you give a farm to blacks who have no capital, and little equipment you will have a massive fall in productivity.

No matter how you look at it – all of what Mugabe is up to, and what will eventually come to South Africa is nothing more than communism and socialism. That’s the real agenda. It has nothing to do with what is good for the country or what is good for the blacks. It is all political – it is all about PERSONAL POWER AT ANY COST!

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