[Here is a fascinating bulletin which draws heavily on an article written on the respected MoneyWeb site by a Zulu journalist. If anyone finds the original article, I would be grateful for it. But below is a fascinating analysis by the Transvaal Agricultural Union complete with interesting facts and statistics like: Farming in southern Africa now only produces 20% of the output that European farms do.

This reminds me of an interesting story from my childhood in Rhodesia. In Rhodesia we had scientists who were trying to develop better methods of farming, etc. I remember at one point, they carried out an experiment with maize (corn). The end result was a ten-fold (yes ten-fold) increase in maize output per acre – compared to the average yield then achieved on Rhodesian farms (which were on a par, if not better than in many parts of the world). That was the type of scientific thinking and the approach used under the much hated “Colonial” rule, and that is why we prospered so much. Science and Logic has no place in post-colonial Africa and that is why post-Colonial Africa can’t feed itself. Africa, under Colonial rule not only fed itself but was a massive EXPORTER of food and food products – go and read any history book. But post-Colonial Africa can’t even feed itself.

I rest my case. Jan]

THE GREAT CULTURAL DIVIDE
Those who advocate land transfers in South Africa work under the assumption that the beneficiaries of this largesse were deprived of not only their land but of the opportunity to develop the land into a productive, first world commercial entity. In other words, if they had kept their land, it would be productive today.

There are scores of countries, many in Africa, where subsistence farming is the norm because it always was the norm. This type of farming is a cultural symptom, and not the result of some historical injustice. Within a cultural frame of reference, every country and ethnic group is different. Why is it that Africa is so undeveloped, while Europe and Asia are developed? Did he latter have more advantage than the former?

It is time to take serious cognizance of cultural differences as an immutable fact of life, especially in South Africa. The Innuit Eskimos of Northern Canada, the aborigines of Australia, the mestizos and native Indians of Central and South America and the Bedouins of the Middle East are classified as “developing” but they live out lives which have changed little for centuries. Peasant farmers just outside Cairo still use the buffalo to turn their thousand-year-old water mills, while women all over Africa still stamp the corn to powder for the evening meal.

But nobody suggests that these people should receive first world productive farms. Subsistence farming is generic to Africa, and this is the reason why the SA government’s land redistribution program has been such a colossal failure. It’s the culture gap, and the folly of giving a productive commercial farm to sometimes hundreds of black beneficiaries – many of whom have never farmed and don’t want to farm – is a result of not acknowledging this gap in South Africa, and the fact that the gap is not closing, especially in the agricultural sector.

Forty years after independence in the continent, African governments are asking SA and Zimbabwean commercial farmers to assist with developing commercial farming sectors in their countries. Why is this necessary? The answer is cultural.

In a very frank article in South Africa’s Moneyweb Business, financial journalist David Carte says what everyone knows but what is invariably sacrificed on the altar of political correctness. The new South Africa should assess its “cultural baggage”, says Carte. “It is a huge impediment to progress towards a First World lifestyle for all”, he declares.

ZULU CUSTOM

Carte was born and raised in Natal and he specifically refers to the drawbacks of Zulu custom vis a vis trying to cope in a first World environment. He says Zulu custom is a bit like that of the Taliban. “Everyone in the tribal area has to conform. Sangomas (witchdoctors), inyangas, ancestor worship and superstition are rife.”

Men rule and women are chattels, he says. Too often children are not the men’s problem. Individual freedom is strictly limited. Carte talks of lobola (bride price), initiations and witchcraft. “In our area”, he says, “a traditional tribal chieftain is the boss. Nobody owns land. (Italics ours). The chief decides who can live where, and a bottle of scotch is often the price of cooperation. The lack of property ownership leads to shocking neglect of the land and to appalling erosion”. (Italics ours).

“Cattle roam wherever”, he continues. “Zulus still measure their wealth and status by their cattle so hundreds of emaciated animals lay the veld bare”

“People with no money are producing numerous babies”, states Clarke. “These children have little hope of decent schooling, since their (few) teachers are under-qualified. Thousands of unemployed men remain in the area and some try to grow a few mealies (corn) or some pumpkins.”

Opportunities are not seen and are thus not acted upon. While the local authority plans to build a tourist resort in a remote area, Carte says that what used to be the premier resort in the berg – the Royal Natal National Park Hotel – closed down five years ago and is now deserted and derelict. “You cannot get a cup of tea in a World Heritage Site,” he laments.

WHITE FARMS

“The grass is lush on most of the white farms and in the neighbouring holiday resorts. The people of Busingati look at them with envy”, says Clarke. “They drive their cattle on to these farms and have lodged claims over every white farm in the district, even though most have been white-owned for up to 100 years. If their claims succeed, those farms will quickly become dustbowls”.

“What we see in Busingati is common all over rural South Africa. These tribal customs are still a heavy influence in the cities and even in Parliament. (Italics ours). Who will end this poverty and despair?”

Carte gives the obvious answers: education, modernization, a radical reform of tribal authorities, forget about lobola and communal land ownership, etc. “But these reforms will not happen unless the black community itself identifies with private property, law and order, individual rights and a First World future.”

It is indicative that a prominent English-language journalist writing for a top business publication is now saying what TAU SA and its members have been emphasizing for years. There is such a huge cultural gap between those to whom the government is transferring commercial farms, and those who created the farms, that even Carte’s pronouncement that this cultural divide could be bridged “in a generation or two” seems optimistic, given what we see around us in Africa and in South Africa itself.

The point should be made that if commercial farming skills are transferable, why haven’t millions in the Third World taken up successful productive agriculture? The answer is that many facets of a group’s culture are not simply skills – they are generic mind-sets, and if the ability to be receptive to aspects of another’s culture is not there, then no amount of skills transfer can be successful. The government continually calls on SA farmers to “transfer skills” to land redistribution beneficiaries.

South Africa has a huge third world component, this still after 350 years of first world settlement. In redistributing productive land, cultural realities are ignored and political ideology has taken over. The SA government then wonders why the transferred farms collapse. The empirical reality of the huge cultural gap in the country is ignored.

This inability to grasp the intrinsic nature and complexity of productive commercial farming is evident all over Africa. The World Food Programme is feeding people in Sudan, Kenya, Somalia, Chad, Tanzania, Burundi, Angola and other parts of the continent.

BOOK

In his 1948 book In Search of South Africa, author H.V. Morton’s description of parts of the Ciskei is similar to Carte’s description of parts of Kwa Zulu sixty years later. Morton says: “Agriculturally it was a tragedy. Everywhere I looked the earth was sparse and seared. Thousand of miserable cattle and goats roamed everywhere making tracks that would form cracks which rains would open up into gullies and dongas.”

“Much of the land is the best in the Union but it cannot bear the weight of the cattle, which mean wives and power. Because of the monstrous over-stocking and the primitive conception of agriculture that goes with it, hundreds of square miles of South Africa must bleed to death.”

South Africa today is no less in the grip of witchcraft, superstition and cultural backwardness than its population was 350 years ago. The Minister of Safety and Security was recently threatened by the Traditional Healers’ Association with magic which would empty the nation’s jails. Traditional healer and church minister Shadrack Madiwane appeared in court on charges of burying parts of a dismembered corpse in his church. The victim’s head was found in the middle of the church yard. Animals are routinely mutilated in ritual killings in South Africa’s cities. Human luman HHips, ears, hands and other body parts are cut off in regular “muti” murders and these parts are used in traditional medicine. The South African police were recently accused of ignoring hundreds of these ritual murders, while policemen themselves have been accused of torturing goats and sheep. Bush circumcision is routinely practiced in the Eastern Cape (many boys die but it continues).

In the meantime, Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe has lifted the ban on witchcraft which was put in place by white settlers in 1899. The Mail & Guardian says the “majority” of Zimbabweans believe in witchcraft. (7.7.06)

South Africa sits with a large majority of its people virtually unassimilable into a First World society. Culturally, they are a million miles away from what it takes to successfully run a commercial farming enterprise producing food for profit, paying tax as a business enterprise, and making plans for the future. Most of these people are a drain on the country’s resources. While only 2% of Americans farm, the other 98% are not a drain on their country – they are not clamouring for land. The majority are employable in a first world economy, in contrast to many in third world countries who are incapable of contributing to their economies and therefore demand land as compensation. This is all they know – subsistence living on a piece of ground. According to the SA Institute of Race Relations, poor farming techniques, rather than drought or Aids, is why land in Sub-Saharan Africa produces only 20% of the average yield in Europe”. (The Citizen 5.4.06)

Why then should South Africa’s commercial farming sector pay for the fact that the country’s majority are unemployable? The farming sector is a vital element in the survival of South Africa’s peoples, and commercial farming should be left alone to continue producing. The third-world millions in the country are the responsibility of the government they put in power. Other solutions must be found for their welfare and survival.

Source: SOUTH AFRICA BULLETIN from the headquarters of TAU SA in Pretoria
Date: November 15, 2006