Mr. Jan Viljoen, Chairperson of TAU SA North, reacted with dismay to the report in the Sowetan Newspaper dated 18 August 2010 in which small – scale farmers apparently said that "the only way to fast – track land redistribution was to take it by force from the whites". It was reported that: "At a meeting in Cape Town on Sunday, the farmers hailed President Robert Mugabe for taking land by force from white commercial farmers."

Mr. Marinus Blignault, chairperson of the Provincial Property rights Committee of TAU SA North, said that, if true, this type of utterances are reckless, short sighted and irresponsible. It is clear that the intention is to create a hostile climate against white people and white commercial farmers in particular. This is indeed deeply regretted and opposed in the strongest possible terms.

Mr. Blignault said this type of hostile, arrogant aggression does not belong in a country governed by a Constitution regarded as one of the best in the world. It seems clear that people and organizations that openly propose violence sabotage the provisions of the Constitution. The question is whether this instigation against a particular group constitutes hate speech?

Mr. Blignault said these utterances must be judged against the dismal performance of small scale farmers in the many land reform projects. It seems as if the purpose of these utterances is to take away the attention from the dismal failures of most of the land reform projects. He said most of the land claims were never prove to be valid, still white commercial farmers cooperate willingly with the government just to see fully functional farms go to ruin in just a few years. Commercial farmers should reconsider giving away farms built up, sometimes over generations, to unproductive groups plagued by infighting. To blame commercial farmers for the lack of success experienced by small scale farmers is irresponsible and directing blame from itself, while Government is failing to provide the required financial and technical support.

According to the report it was said that: "About 86 percent of the land is in the hands of white farmers, we have less than five percent, and the government is afraid of taking back that land." Mr. Blignault said that these claims are based on lies and misinformation. According to a report from the Department of Land Affairs, 29 August 2003 and a report by the CSIR, the following was reported:

Government owned land

(National and provincial) 24 919 290 20.43 %

Cities and towns 1 398 912 1.15 %

Commercial agriculture 13 362 951 9.6 %

(not government owned)

He said it is clear that the information is so outrageously wrong that it is impossible to believe that any serious researcher or informed person can openly express this nonsense.

The report further indicated that Independent researcher Stephen Greenberg said that though there was "a radical attempt to transform agrarian reform" in Zimbabwe, something positive had come out of it. "In Zimbabwe the air has cleared and something good has happened." Mr. Blignault said the Mr. Greenberg is desperately misinformed. He urged Mr. Greenberg to contact the agricultural union for more up to date information and to discuss his misinformed believes.

The claim in the article that "There is no need for compensation. History tells us that the land belongs to our forefathers. There were no negotiations," said Sithembele Tempi, coordinator of the Ilizwi Lamafama from Eastern Cape." is just another story to justify the proposed violence against white people. History is patient. It is a pity that this misinformation is believed.

The commercial farmer is dedicated to uphold the principles reflected in the Constitution of South Africa, with respect to property rights. Forced land invasions and land grab will be opposed with dedication and commitment. Commercial farmers are lawful, peaceful people but understand the importance of property rights as basis of all modern, civilized societies and will protect this right for the benefit of future generations of South Africans.

Mr. Viljoen said commercial farmers and Government cannot allow lawless gangsters to threaten the basis of the democracy and civilization in South Africa.

SHORT SIGHTED

A recent visit by TAU SA to the Commercial Farmers Union (CFU) of Zimbabwe annual congress revealed that Zimbabwe’s small coterie of commercial farmers - some of whom are farming on the fringes of their properties - are unwilling to leave the land they love. (Many of course cannot, and others won’t come to South Africa because they see the same fate awaiting them as in Zimbabwe).

The catastrophe of Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe’s land "reform" program has been broadcast to the world, but the real tragedy is watching your farm being destroyed by squatters who have either invaded it or were dumped on the farm during the takeover period. Calling the police to object is an exercise in futility.

Most of the 180 CFU congress attendees have been in jail, some of them up to fourteen times. Trying to take out your furniture from your occupied house is enough to draw the wrath of the regime – it is then that the police arrive with alacrity to cart one off to the station to be charged and convicted. Despite this, many of these farmers are convinced that their country will get back on its feet once the poison of the regime’s presence is removed.

TAU SA members saw the pitiful remnants of what used to be – macadamia trees at half their usual height, choked by overgrown grass and weeds, farms where maize had grown as far as they eye could see, now returned to savannah. The quality of the soil is outstanding, yet the excuse for non-productivity is drought. (There’s always an excuse in Africa, but for the record from 1991 to 2000, the average rainfall was 611 mm and from 2001 to 2010, it was 671 mm. From 1971 to 2010, the average rainfall never fell below 600 mm)

TAU SA saw no or little production, no tractors working – except as transport along the roads! Somebody donated a huge harvester that in South Africa would be used for thousands of hectares. In Zimbabwe, it was being used for a ten-hectare plot! The full circle is almost complete in some areas – the return to mud huts, subsistence agriculture, dusty unpaved roads, no transport, and goats and skinny cattle meandering along. Railroads don’t function – only trains between the cities run. Electricity supply is a problem, and the importation of food is now a way of life.

The country’s agriculture is returning to the subsistence, live-for-the-present mentality that existed before the settlers arrived.

Zimbabwe dollars are used no more – only South African rands and US dollars are legal daily tender, some notes so dirty as to be illegible. People have taken to washing US dollars and pegging them out to dry. Check points dot all the roads – it’s easy money. What did you bring for me? asks the policeman as he stops your vehicle. Then there are the toll roads, another attempt to siphon something from the populace.

Democratic Republic of Congo, here we come! Another beautiful, rich and superbly endowed African country bites the dust, while its leader thumbs his nose at the rest of the world, shops in Hong Kong and ignores his people’s suffering – all in the name of democracy. Where are the British and American governments now? Their dream has been realized – the struggle for "liberation" has been won! What are their comments? Where are the United Nations resolutions condemning yet another African tyrant? Where is the International Criminal Court?

Let us look at what the US, the UK and the UN replaced in the name of one man, one vote.

The Zimbabwe government’s campaign to obliterate commercial agriculture (certainly with a racist motive!), under the guise of agrarian reform, but in reality in the interest of retaining power through illegal and violent means, has been incredibly effective. Watched by the so-called world community, Zimbabwe’s Mugabe set out to make life so intolerable for whites that they would leave. And leave they did.

But they left behind a legacy no one can obliterate, not even those in the West who denigrated the old Rhodesia’s farmers as oppressors and exploiters of the masses.

We quote hereunder from a 2008 quarterly issue of the Rhodesians Worldwide magazine:

"In the later nineteenth century, the first white hunters, traders and missionaries who came to the region which used to be known as Rhodesia and is now Zimbabwe, found a land devoid of infrastructure. The wheel was not yet in use. With a population of about a quarter of a million at the time, most of the land was not occupied. Commercial farming started in the 1890s on what was, for the most part, virgin land. There were no roads, no railways, no electricity, no telephones, no fences, boreholes, pumps, windmills, dams, irrigation schemes, cattle dips, barns or any other farm buildings.

These first farmers had to discover how to contend with predators that killed their livestock and other animals that consumed their crops; and how to control diseases, pests and parasites that were foreign to them. Knowledge and experience built up over generations in the developed world had limited application in the new Rhodesia, since the local climate, soil and vegetation were vastly different.

From this starting point, fraught with difficulties, agriculture developed faster than it had anywhere else in the world. Soon the country became self-sufficient in most agricultural products. In many cases yields per hectare and quality equaled or bettered those in the developed world.

The United Nations Food and Agriculture Year Book of 1975 ranked the then Rhodesia

Some of these rankings were in fact reached long before 1975. Rhodesia’s Virginia tobacco was rated the best in the world in yield and quality, while maize entries in world championships were constantly graded in the first three places.

The world’s largest single citrus producer was developed early in the country’s history. The highest quality breeding stock of numerous breeds of cattle, sheep, goats, pigs and poultry were imported. At the same time, the indigenous cattle were developed through breeding and selection to highly productive and respected breeds. Wildlife was incorporated into farming systems to develop a highly successful eco-tourism industry and endangered species found their most secure havens on farm conservancies.

Zimbabwe was the world’s second largest exporter of flue-cured tobacco. Agriculture contributed more to the Gross Domestic Product than any other industry. It was the largest employer of labour, providing employment for about a third of the total labour force. Zimbabwe indeed was the bread basket of Africa."

The report continues with details of government agricultural departments and technical colleges set up, of veterinary services, of Research and Development of specialist products including tobacco, of improved crop varieties, of livestock nutrition and management, of wild life conservation, of water management, of sustainable production through drought years as well as through high rainfall periods. (Rex Tattersfield, a former plant breeder in Zimbabwe, was one of only five men in the world awarded a gold medal for soybean research and development.)

The farmers contributed to the leadership, fabric and welfare of society out of all proportion to their numbers. Each farm was to a certain extent an outpost of civilization, where schools were established, clinics and dispensaries were built, and where ambulance services were almost always available.

No more. All of this has been replaced by poverty, terror, wholesale theft and wastelands where once crops grew. Yet this state of affairs seems preferable to the world than white commercial farming control. The yardstick by which countries are now judged is not whether people go hungry or are crushed by grinding poverty, but by whether there is a democracy - of whatever sort - where tyrants stay in power for decades, and where millions flee as refugees, never to return. Indeed, the West has much to answer for, but they will not be held responsible for present-day Zimbabwe. They have moved on and millions are left to pick up the pieces.