South Africa's agriculture ministry caused disquiet among the country's farmers last week by threatening those who mistreat their workers with land expropriation.
"We are obviously disturbed by the persistent reports of abuses on farms," South African Agriculture and Land Affairs Minister Lulu Xingwana told a national conference in Johannesburg on Thursday of the Food and Allied Workers Union that represents farm workers.
"This is in keeping with the law of the land: for those people who are not keeping [within] the law, the government has the right to expropriate," she said.
Land reform and redistribution are sensitive topics in a country where the minority white population still owns the vast majority of the land.
Xingwana came out in support of her deputy minister, Dirk du Toit, who was criticized by opposition parties for having referred in parliament the previous day to a lingering "medieval" attitude among farmers.
"My deputy minister knows what he is talking about," Xingwana told the conference.
In response to a question about farmers who lay off and evict workers unlawfully, Du Toit told members of parliament on Wednesday: "Those people who don't want to hear, we are not only going to take them to court, we are going to also take their land away from them."
This drew a sharp response from the country's largest farmers' union, Agri SA.
"Since the beginning of the year not a single case of illegal farm eviction has come to Agri SA's attention. Our conclusion is therefore that the deputy minister also regards legal evictions as unfair", it said in a statement.
Agri SA said it would raise its objections with South African President Thabo Mbeki and demand a clarification or retraction.
"Let them write a letter to the president and let's discuss the issue," the president's spokesman Mukoni Ratshitanga said on Friday.
The main opposition Democratic Alliance has slammed Du Toit's statement as racist for implying that all white farmers abuse their workers.
"As a senior member of the ANC [African National Congress], he [Du Toit] stood up and made racist remarks about white farmers, insinuating that all of them assault their farm workers," the party's land affairs spokesman Maans Nel told parliament on Thursday.
"What sort of message are these senior people of the ANC sending out to farmers who are overwhelmingly positive about land reform and South Africa?" he said.
Hostility is rife in South Africa's farming sector, with concern about rural crime and farmer murders on the one hand, and complaints of ill treatment of farm workers, mostly black and colored (of mixed race) on the other.
Some white farmers fear they are the political targets of farm murders, 86 of which were reported in the past financial year.
And farm workers often complain of ill treatment by farmers whom they accuse of impounding their livestock, refusing to allow them to bury their family members on farms, or demolishing their homes.
Mbeki's government aims to redistribute 30 percent of the country's agricultural land to blacks by 2014.
EUROPEAN TARGETS: The planned Munich center would support TSMC’s European customers to design high-performance, energy-efficient chips, an executive said Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電), the world’s largest contract chipmaker, yesterday said that it plans to launch a new research-and-development (R&D) center in Munich, Germany, next quarter to assist customers with chip design. TSMC Europe president Paul de Bot made the announcement during a technology symposium in Amsterdam on Tuesday, the chipmaker said. The new Munich center would be the firm’s first chip designing center in Europe, it said. The chipmaker has set up a major R&D center at its base of operations in Hsinchu and plans to create a new one in the US to provide services for major US customers,
The Ministry of Transportation and Communications yesterday said that it would redesign the written portion of the driver’s license exam to make it more rigorous. “We hope that the exam can assess drivers’ understanding of traffic rules, particularly those who take the driver’s license test for the first time. In the past, drivers only needed to cram a book of test questions to pass the written exam,” Minister of Transportation and Communications Chen Shih-kai (陳世凱) told a news conference at the Taoyuan Motor Vehicle Office. “In the future, they would not be able to pass the test unless they study traffic regulations
‘A SURVIVAL QUESTION’: US officials have been urging the opposition KMT and TPP not to block defense spending, especially the special defense budget, an official said The US plans to ramp up weapons sales to Taiwan to a level exceeding US President Donald Trump’s first term as part of an effort to deter China as it intensifies military pressure on the nation, two US officials said on condition of anonymity. If US arms sales do accelerate, it could ease worries about the extent of Trump’s commitment to Taiwan. It would also add new friction to the tense US-China relationship. The officials said they expect US approvals for weapons sales to Taiwan over the next four years to surpass those in Trump’s first term, with one of them saying
‘COMING MENACINGLY’: The CDC advised wearing a mask when visiting hospitals or long-term care centers, on public transportation and in crowded indoor venues Hospital visits for COVID-19 last week increased by 113 percent to 41,402, the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) said yesterday, as it encouraged people to wear a mask in three public settings to prevent infection. CDC Epidemic Intelligence Center Deputy Director Lee Chia-lin (李佳琳) said weekly hospital visits for COVID-19 have been increasing for seven consecutive weeks, and 102 severe COVID-19 cases and 19 deaths were confirmed last week, both the highest weekly numbers this year. CDC physician Lee Tsung-han (李宗翰) said the youngest person hospitalized due to the disease this year was reported last week, a one-month-old baby, who does not
RSS