http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/4340396.stm

Seizure order on SA white farm
South Africa is for the first time forcing a white farmer to sell his land under a redistribution plan.

The government served an expropriation order on Hannes Visser.

The move came after failed talks between Mr Visser and the Land Claims Commission, set up to return to black people land they lost under apartheid.

Mr Visser said he would challenge the decision in court. The government says it wants to hand over about a third of white-owned farm land by 2014.

But progress has been slow, as the policy until now, has meant that both the seller and buyer have to agree on the terms, the BBC's Peter Biles in Johannesburg says.

Protracted negotiations

Mr Visser has the 500-hectare (1,250-acre) cattle and crop farm in Lichtenburg in North West province.

His family bought it in 1968, but a black family has lodged a claim to the property dating back to the 1940s.

Over the past two-and-a-half years, Mr Visser and the Land Claims Commission have been trying to negotiate, but failed to agree on the value of the property.

The government had offered to buy the farm for $275,000 but Mr Visser says it is worth almost twice as much.

Mr Visser now has 21 days to respond to the notice of expropriation.

In the 11 years since the end of apartheid, less than 4% of farmland has been transferred from white to black ownership, he says.

The BBC is in a bit of a slumber // this is essentially repeat news from them as it has been festering in the SA main news bulletins for weeks now, but granted it has come to a head so to speak //

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The planned expropriation follows two-and-half years of inconclusive negotiations on the value of the property -- with Visser wanting R3-million and the government offering R1,75-million.
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But to the actual issue. There are of cource thousands of claims in the system and hundreds if not more have already been finalised on a willing buyer willing seller scenario ..

Of cource the land owners will always claim they are not getting the market rate and the government will claim the rate is too high, often no one is ever totally happy in these deals.

The fact of the matter is there are some thousands of claims that will not see the light of day or may take many many yesrs to sort if ever, the government does not have a BLANK cheque to pay out everyone, so the bottleneck will continue sometimes for many yesrs and life goes on, the sun comes up the hunters have fun in SA.

Some farmers in fact will be (very happy to sell to the government) as they might not have ever found a buyer on the open market, so it is not all gloom and doom. Of cource there are exceptions to the rule and like this case in point it is a stalemate and under legal dispute

The SA economy is actually (quite buoyant)and overseas buyers are in fact buying up lots of residential and luxury properties in droves because of the favourable exchange rate and comparitively cheap prices by overseas standards

Look around carefully at the rest of the world first and see what MAJOR problems some other so called western countries are experiencing with their economies, and (with terrorists) and then you might just find SA is not such a bad place after all, and with all the billions and billions of US dollars being earmarked for Africa from the West in particualr some are going to cash in on the gravy train I believe

Peter

quote:

Look around carefully at the rest of the world first and see what MAJOR problems some other so called western countries are experiencing with their economies, and (with terrorists) and then you might just find SA is not such a bad place after all, and with all the billions and billions of US dollars being earmarked for Africa from the West in particualr some are going to cash in on the gravy train I believe

__________________

Peter, with things so good there as you describe them here, does this mean you are now going to migrate from New Zealand and back to RSA?

You're surely correct on those there who will cash in on the gravy train from the west.

DB

quote:

Peter, with things so good there as you describe them here, does this mean you are now going to migrate from New Zealand and back to RSA?

You're surely correct on those there who will cash in on the gravy train from the west.

DB

Hi Dungbeetle //

Actually I personally am (quite happy) living in New Zealand.

I am one of the reasonably lucky ones I guess as I have dual NZ passport and South African passport, so I can get the best of BOTH worlds ...

Last time I went on a short 6 month vaction to SA and stayed there for 1-year. I basically am a fair weather sailor and try to plan to spend the NZ winter in SA and the NZ summer in NZ, that way I get what amounts to two summers for the price of one, as the SA winter is a joke really and about on a par with some countries summers.

Also when in SA I dont have any accommodation costs and I can use my NZ credit card over there which gives me a (damn good exchange rate) and with the cost of living in SA much cheaper than in NZ I dont really need to emigrate back there, I can just live there ( on vaction) for 6-months of the year as a South African but without having to pay tax as I am legally classified as non resident traveller.

When I depart NZ I use my NZ passport and upon arrival in SA I pull out my SA passport so I dont have to line up with the Aliens, I just come through entry as a SA citizen on an extended vacation back home

Peter

quote:

Originally posted by DanEP:The government had offered to buy the farm for $275,000 but Mr Visser says it is worth almost twice as much.

What is the actual value? Is this a reasonable amount to pay for 1250 ac. of land there? Is double this amout a reasonable amount???

Namibia is following closely, its there turn in the ever unfolding soap opera of Africa..

I said it before and will again.Go to the bank and borrow as much money they will give the land owner and leave the country and let those guys eat the loss...and choke on the land...

Mike

Reparations are obtaining precident -- as Ray A. has noted re Namibia, etc. But it isn't just Africa. Africa is only an example. Reparations are being demanded by those who had been sold into slavery by their neighbors, and transported and resold in South America (primarily), and in those colonies that became the US -- and later in the US after it became the US. While it hasn't had much voice in the US -- besides loud pronouncements of injustice -- it does seem to be getting traction AND legal precident in the world-wide court -- with support in the UN.

In the western world, once a person dies and their estate has been through probate, it becomes very difficult to make a claim against that estate. The claim has to be made before the judgements are rendered and the estate is distributed. Decendants are pretty much free and clear. There is also the issue of claims of crimes commited before the crime was established by law -- retroactively. The most vulnerable entities in the US are corporations. ANY corporation old enough to have directly benefitted from slavery -- or any corporation that was spun-off from such a corporation -- is not subject to the probate/death protections. However, there are lots of companies that are derivative of Standard Oil/Rockefeller trusts and monopolies, and those monopolies did a lot of damage to a lot of families -- even after some anti-trust laws had been enacted. I've been curious how this will play out.

That said -- I didn't post this news simply to suggest that the days of SA safari are numbered -- but more because I've been interested in the above issues... AND because I'm worried about what's happening in Zimbabwe and Namibia.

Dan

I remember that in Zimbabwe there was once a ordered and overly slow process of legally buying farms to give to black re-settlers. That process there too was lethargic.

Then suddenly the pressure from the millions who thought they could get free land from it, plus political expediency to remove a minority population but politically internationally active one from the face of the earth resulted in wholesale land theft and genocide.

Maybe even a blind man can see the comparisons and understand history repeats itself.