24 Apr 2015, 4:13 pm
geojanes wrote:Doctor Fate wrote:However, the transition was abrupt, brought about by foreign disinvestment, and the results have not been too encouraging.The economic problems in South Africa always existed for the vast majority of people. It was only that Apartheid provided most of the wealth to whites.
True to some extent, but stripping the whites of their land and wealth has not resulted in widespread prosperity, has it?
Whites weren't stripped of their land in South Africa, they were given title to it. You must be thinking about Zimbabwe.
From wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inequality_in_post-apartheid_South_AfricaIn 1994, the newly elected African National Congress began to develop a program of land reform. This includes three primary means of reform: redistribution, restitution, and land tenure reform.[13] Redistribution aims to transfer white-owned commercial farms to black Africans.[13] Restitution involves giving compensation to land lost to whites due to apartheid, racism, and discrimination.[13] Land tenure reform strives to provide more secure access to land.[13] Several laws have been enacted to facilitate redistribution, restitution, and land tenure reform. Section 25 of the new South African Constitution, adopted in 1994, promised land reform to blacks in exchange for giving property titles to whites who acquired the property under prior regimes.[18] But while the titles were given out, the land reform was never implemented [18] The Provision of Certain Land of Settlement Act of 1996 designates land for settlement purposes and ensures financial assistance to those seeking to acquire land.[13] The Restitution of Land Rights Act of 1994 guided the implementation of restitution and gave it a legal basis.[13] The Extension of Security of Tenure Act of 1996 helps rural populations obtain stronger rights to their land and regulates the relationships between owners of rural land and those living on it.[13] So far, these land-reform measures have been semi-effective. By 1998, over 250,000 black South Africans received land as a result of the Land Redistribution Programme.[13] Very few restitution claims have been resolved.[13] In the five years after the land reform programs were instituted, only 1% of land changed hands, despite the African National Congress’s goal of 30%.[13]
As of 2006 about 70% of the land in South Africa was still owned by whites.
What's going on in South Africa right now is terrible, and the country has big problems, but are you suggesting that it would be better if Apartheid hadn't ended? If not, then what are you saying?
http://www.csmonitor.com/World/Africa/2 ... uth-Africa
More here:
ERMELO, South Africa -- In a country cursed by one of the world's highest murder rates, being a white farmer makes a violent death an even higher risk.
Whether attacks have been motivated by race or robbery, a rising death rate from rural homicides is drawing attention to the lack of change on South Africa's farms nearly two decades after the end of apartheid -- and to the tensions burgeoning over enduring racial inequality.
Some of South Africa's predominantly white commercial farmers go as far as to brand the farm killings a genocide.
'Potentially explosive' issue
On the other side of the divide, populists are seizing on the discontent among the black majority to demand a forced redistribution of white-owned farms along the lines of neighboring Zimbabwe.
"The issue is potentially explosive," said Lechesa Tsenoli, deputy minister for land reform, arguing that South Africa's future depends on ending inequality on the farms.
The economic change promised by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) when white-minority rule ended in 1994 has been even slower in the countryside than in cities and mines, where at least small elites of black South Africans have prospered.
Land ownership ratios are little changed from 1913, when the Natives' Land Act set aside 87 percent of land for whites. Meanwhile, black farm workers are among South Africa's poorest.
But life is getting more uncomfortable for the white farmers, too. Their number is down a third, to some 40,000, in the past 15 years. Headlines about the farm killings are another incentive to sell.
For while South Africa's overall annual murder rate has more than halved since the end of apartheid to around 32 people per 100,000, figures for commercial farmers show a near 50 percent rise to an average rate of some 290 per 100,000 a year in the five years to 2011.
No, to your question.
I am saying the radical change in government has resulted in massive upheaval, increases in crime (overall), and has done nothing to help poverty. I am saying a more gradual shift of power, and a less punitive sentiment, would have likely lessened this difficulty.
