WARNING: This is Version 1 of my old archive, so Photos will NOT work and many links will NOT work. But you can find articles by searching on the Titles. There is a lot of information in this archive. Use the SEARCH BAR at the top right. Prior to December 2012; I was a pro-Christian type of Conservative. I was unaware of the mass of Jewish lies in history, especially the lies regarding WW2 and Hitler. So in here you will find pro-Jewish and pro-Israel material. I was definitely WRONG about the Boeremag and Janusz Walus. They were for real.
Original Post Date: 2007-12-04 Time: 00:00:00 Posted By: Jan
[Firstly, this document was “leaked” conveniently. This sounds to me like an Mbeki trick, taking a feather out of Mugabe’s cap. This is EXACTLY the way Mugabe tried to win black support. I think Mbeki is trying to “out-communist” Jacob Zuma and the S.African Communist Party. So is this just an election trick… with a lot of leftist talk by the ANC while intending to remain largely on the current course? Very likely.
Secondly, in the long term the ANC cannot be trusted, and there is too much talk of moving more to the left. I have no doubt that we are moving more to the left after the next election no matter who wins. The Whites are going to be driven off the land. Big trouble is coming. Jan]
With most of the African National Congress (ANC’s) membership growth mushrooming in rural areas, the party has set its sights on a major overhaul of its largely failed land and agriculture policies to revive the “platteland”.
Proposals for sweeping changes contained in a new discussion document and a draft resolution prepared for the ANC’s crucial national congress in Polokwane include “a special land tax” to act as an “incentive” for the selling off of unused land to make way for thousands of emerging farmers.
An immediate repeal of legislation which prevents sub-division of land is also mooted to reverse a trend of farmland being concentrated in the hands of a few.
The draft admits the government has made “insufficient progress” – with only 4 percent of land transferred to black owners, against a target of redistributing 30 percent of the 80 percent white-owned land.
| ‘The idea is to emerge with an integrated rural strategy for the country’ |
It is now gearing up for “fundamental changes in apartheid-skewed ownership patterns” before 2014.
Both the party and government have already said they are abandoning the willing-buyer, willing-seller policy based on market value expropriation, but the draft document is careful to frame expropriation within the current limits of the constitution. Yet, some of the proposals will inevitably affect large commercial – mostly white – farmers, for instance through a review of water policy that currently favours them.
On the other hand, they may benefit from a proposed investment in rural infrastructure to support emerging farmers and link them to services, markets and industrial hubs. Established farmers may also get other incentives to support neighbouring emerging farmers to enter the commercial market.
The “leaked” policy document Towards a resolution on rural development, land reform and agrarian change significantly takes rural policy out of the ANC’s social transformation domain and puts it squarely within its economic framework, a sign the party finally means business to integrate the second economy.
The Eastern Cape, the ANC’s largest voting block by far with over 70 percent rural membership, has already been mandated to develop an additional blue-print for implementation of the national proposals.
| ‘Our people want to remain in the rural areas’ |
“More than anything, we are not talking as South Africans who are living in the homelands. We want to talk as South Africans who live in the rural Eastern Cape,” said Thobile Mhlahlo, provincial ANC executive member and MEC in charge of the pilot.
“The idea is to emerge with an integrated rural strategy for the country, based on our experience. I think we have been able to make great economic interventions in urban life, but rural policy has not been prioritised and focused in an integrated way.”
Asked if the urgent focus on rural areas was an effort to stave off a Zimbabwe land grab, he said: “We don’t want Zimbabwe, for sure.
“Our people want to remain in the rural areas, hence it is important for us to prioritise around a rural development strategy. We don’t want the rural members to feel isolated from the urban components of the ANC.”
He said the blueprint would be aimed at linking rural economies with new urban industrial zones and the development of the coastline.
Eastern Cape ANC chair Stone Sizani said the province was consulting other rural communities across the country “so that the plan should have a national character”.
A centre-piece of the agrarian reform plan is an “over-arching authority” to drive an integrated programme of land reform and rural development” and implement the vast array of proposals, including “large-scale programmes to establish new smallholders” and to build specific state and private institutions to support beneficiaries of reform.