Dutch weekly Elsevier highlights anti-Boer violence in SA

Malema calls for confiscation of all Boer farms. Yet blacks leave the countryside enmasse for the cities: there’s little interest amongst blacks in farming, notes Dutch journalist…

Journalist Fred de Vries highlights the black-racist violence targetting Afrikaners in South Africa in this week’s Dutch weekly magazine Elsevier.nl. He writes  that the anti-Boer violence and massive invasions of white-owned land by black squatters are causing an exodus -- and growing unrest amongst whites. “Many farmers feel intimidated by the massive land-occupations by black squatters,’ De Vries notes, adding: “It is black racism’. He sounds a critical note about SA president Jacob Zuma’s total silence about his youth league leader Julius Malema’s constant, public incitements to kill the Boers, and Malema’s calls to confiscate all the Boer farms without compensation. Yet there’s ‘very little interest in farming amongst blacks,’ noted de Vries, quoting Afrikaner farmer Daan Pretorius of the farm Modderfontein, next to Grootvlei.

‘ Foreign investors are growing weary…’

De Vries quotes Bennie van Zyl, the president of the 6,000-member Transvaal Agricultural Union, as saying that ‘the farmers are reaching breaking point: they are ready to leave, and others are ready to fight back, the ‘bittereinders’. De Vries notes the large number of applications for emigration visa for New Zealand and Australia. And ‘foreign investors are growing weary’, he writes. “Afrikaner farmers are popular everywhere. The cooperative Agri-SA has requests from 23 African countries who offer land to the Afrikaner farmers. Hundreds of farmers have already relocated to Mozambique. Zambia, Botswana, Congo and even Egypt. Others are taking up offers for land in Georgia. But the majority of Boers are waiting resignedly for things to come. Daan Pretorius signed a contract with a Zambian Minister but seven years later he was back: disillusioned and cheated too many times. Pretorius’ farm Modderfontein is right next to the town of Grootvlei, about 100km east of Johannesburg. It’s hardly pittoresque: the house dates from the seventies; its view it dominated by the condensation from the nearby power station’s cooling towers. Pretorius has managed to obtain 1,200 hectares of land to create a viable farm in this semi-arid region. He only has eight of his 23 original workers left and each one is paid more than the required monthly minimum wage of 140 Euros a month. “The workers moved out of the rural areas to townships, mostly Zulus and Sothos, in search of a ‘better life for all’ the ANC was promising them,’ he said. The animo for working on farms is low.” This is a brief summary of the article reproduced below. http://www.elsevier.nl

"Rising ANC-star Julius Malema scores with inciting language about nationalisation and land-confiscations. Unrest is growing amongst whites…’

http://www.elsevier.nl