Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[wierd]

Not my fault most americans spend more time oogling each other in highschool than learning the mandatory geography curriculum. (shrug)

I can point out most places on a map, unless they are really obscure. (sigh)

[Kagus]

The farmland reclamation is basically just Mugabe 2: Electric Boogaloo. Because since it worked out so well the first time when Mugabe exiled white farmers and reappropriated their land, now that Mugabe's been kicked out someone else wanted to do the exact same fucking thing.

The reasoning behind the move seems to be the same as well: "Fuck Whitey".


If the displaced farmers are actually undergoing paramilitary training to take it back though, that is both surprising and very worrying... If I remember correctly, last time they just left for a different country that was more than happy to welcome a bunch of experienced farmers into its population, which is a small part of why Mugabe didn't get a lot of traction when he asked for them to come back.

[ChairmanPoo]

Mugabe wasn't based in South Africa...

[wierd]

It's almost as if there is some strange idea that the location in which a dumb idea is enacted in, somehow abrogates it being dumb.

I am not going to make a value judgement based on skin color. Likewise, a government should not either.  Just because somebody has $Favored_Pigment_Level skin, does not mean that it is A-OK to take things from $Other_Pigment_Level people.  That statement is true no matter what direction you apply it.

Simply because this is a different country this time, does not make it somehow stop being stupid.

It was dumb in the US, It was dumb in Zimbabwe, and it is dumb in South Africa.

[Kagus]

Mugabe wasn't based in South Africa...

No, but Mugabe got a fair amount of media attention for doing it in Zimbabwe, which was part of a chain of events that eventually lead to the coup that booted him out, further cementing the concept that it was in general a bad idea.

So to see South Africa doing the same damn thing, very shortly after Mugabe's educational demonstration, is really rather confusing... You'd think that the whole "getting removed from leadership and exiled" result would at least be taken into consideration when deciding "Y'know what? I bet Mugabe just didn't remove them properly. I can do a better job!"

[Reelya]

I looked into this for a discussion on another forum, and the whole issue seems way overblown.

The South African government has had the power to remove farmers with market-rate compensation ever since the end of Apartheid, it's an eminent domain type of law. The law change just meant they don't have to offer you market-rate anymore. That means the government would be free to e.g. offer some compensation that's between 0% and 100%, while currently they can always do it if they offer 100%. So, with the law change a more reasonable prediction of how a law like that would be used would be to offer some fractional amount of compensation, say 70% of market rate. This could be used as a threat which would encourage people to just sell their land before the government offers you below market rates. So, one or two white farmers could be asked to sell their land at 70% of market rate and suddenly, a whole lot of other farmers would be thinking about selling their land, which would make things much easier for the government than trying to take over a whole lot of farms and distribute them.

But remember, this is a hypothetical as no such cases yet exist.

As proof that the whole thing isn't happening just look at the articles about it:

https://www.express.co.uk/news/world/1009953/south-africa-farmers-donald-trump-theresa-may-cyril-ramaphosa-land-reforms

The African National Congress (ANC) said that the bill which would have the power to take land away from white farmers to rebalance racial disparities needed to have further consideration.

"bill" which "would have", i.e. the bill isn't active yet. And remember, the bill isn't to make it possible to do this, it's just to make it possible while paying less than 100% of market value. Also for historical purposes, remember that the big law which herded black people out of the good farm lands / suburbs only occurred between 1950 and around 1980, so many of the farmers who benefited directly from black displacement into the "homelands" (reservations / concentration areas) are still alive. So, there's an argument to be had that a lot of that land was originally gained in slightly less than honorable means, and that the victims/benefactors of that are people who are still alive today.

President Trump tweeted: “I have asked Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures ad expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers.”

Yeah, Trump's tweet is bullshit. Nobody is being killed and no farms have been taken away, because the said law doesn't exist yet, it's just being talked about, and as I stated, it just removes the current laws "100% compensation" clause for Eminent domain, there's no evidence it would be used that way. The source of the rumor is white power fringe activists from South Africa.

[Criptfeind]

I think the situation is way more complex then you guys (other then Reelya) are making it out to be. 

It's not just "ooohhh, the whites were bad, lets take stuff away from them to give to the blacks". Apartheid was a complex and legally enforced concept that happened within living memory. There are black people alive today who had their lands seized without or with little restitution and given to white people. On the whole they had over 40 years of legally enforced inequality that's left a huge wealth gap between people, and leaving that to fester isn't exactly a smart idea either.

Ultimately restitution is a very complex question that I don't have any answers at all for, but just saying "muh reverse racism, muh zimbabwe." and trying to ignore the question is absolutely one of the more painful and damaging answers, even if there might be worse ones.

[Reelya]

Yep, it's easy to misunderstand how recent this is. The suite of laws preventing black ownership of and movement through almost all of land in most of the nation's regions only came down 23 years ago. From 1950 onwards, they created reservations then said those reservations were separate countries, herded the entire black population into them, and said that black residents would need a passport to leave them. And they didn't issue passports.

Don't fall into the trap of assuming that Apartheid was comparable to pre-civil-rights Southern USA, which is easy to do. This wasn't just separate drinking fountains and back-of-the-bus, this was a full scale fascist police state that controlled every aspect of black people's lives and denied they were even citizens. This wasn't "back of the bus", it was separate buses in separate zones, and there were armed checkpoints to ensure those black buses didn't leave black zones.

An analogy would be if America had been invaded by the Chinese in 1950, passed laws that prevented white Americans owning land and herded all whites into a few cities, and being given the most arid regions as "farmland" with 90% of all land being handed out to Chinese settlers, a process which takes the next 30 years to complete. Then, in 1993 the Americans rebelled and regain power, yet by 2017 Chinese still own 72% of the land, and hand-wringers are saying that you shouldn't take land away from the Chinese since it's their land and it might affect the economy if you do that.

Also, it's important to remember that it wasn't the Zimbabwe land ownership that tanked the economy, it was the crippling sanctions enacted by GW Bush and Blair. The land ownership wasn't in fact an important economic detail, it was other government debts and the sudden sanctions that did all the damage. The situation in South Africa is thus completely unrelated. Handing lands to black people wasn't any sort of cause of hyperinflation by itself: the only way it's happening again is if Trump deliberately uses the USA's economic might to cause a meltdown in South Africa.

[ChairmanPoo]

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm actually Robert Mugabe

[Kagus]

It's also worth remembering that there are plenty of racist whackjobs in power positions in both South Africa and in Zimbabwe, and it is entirely possible that there might be motives involved which aren't completely rational and well-meaning. The fact that apartheid SA was fucking horrible doesn't change the fact that there are still plenty of fucking horrible people around today.

Spoiler (click to show/hide)

I'm actually Robert Mugabe

I knew it!  I'd often wondered why you and Mugabe were never seen in the same room together... Cake-eating cur!

[sluissa]

Back on topic:

Andrew Gillum picked up the Dem nomination for FL Gov, a minor upset although not entirely untelegraphed. He will be running against hard line Trumper, DeSantis.

Arizona breathes a sigh of relief as Sheriff Joe loses badly in his Senate bid.

Rest of the night was less surprising and dramatic. Overall fun to watch though.

[Reelya]

I love the snopes page on Sheriff Joe

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/joe-arpaio-misdeeds/

CLAIM: Made women give birth in shackles

STATUS: Mixture.

This is the sort of thing you really want to just say "false" not "mixture".

CLAIM: Refused to investigate alleged child sex crimes

STATUS: Mostly true.

As the East Valley Tribune‘s Ryan Gabrielson reported in a Pulitzer Prize-winning article in 2008, Sheriff Arpaio’s personal obsession with immigration enforcement sapped county resources and led to a sharp decline in criminal investigations and arrests. Many of the cases that fell by the wayside involved sex crimes. “By Arpaio’s own admission, the number of uninvestigated sex crime cases eventually swelled to more than 400,” Gabrielson wrote in 2017. “Many of the victims were children.”

Yeah, this guy was so obsessed with chasing brown-skinned people that he dropped the ball on prosecuting pedos.

[Kagus]

You have to respect a man who knows his priorities.

You just have to. It's the law.

[wierd]

I think douglas adams put it best in his HitchHiker's Guide...

“It comes from a very ancient democracy, you see..."
"You mean, it comes from a world of lizards?"
"No," said Ford, who by this time was a little more rational and coherent than he had been, having finally had the coffee forced down him, "nothing so simple. Nothing anything like so straightforward. On its world, the people are people. The leaders are lizards. The people hate the lizards and the lizards rule the people."
"Odd," said Arthur, "I thought you said it was a democracy."
"I did," said Ford. "It is."
"So," said Arthur, hoping he wasn't sounding ridiculously obtuse, "why don't people get rid of the lizards?"
"It honestly doesn't occur to them," said Ford. "They've all got the vote, so they all pretty much assume that the government they've voted in more or less approximates to the government they want."
"You mean they actually vote for the lizards?"
"Oh yes," said Ford with a shrug, "of course."
"But," said Arthur, going for the big one again, "why?"
"Because if they didn't vote for a lizard," said Ford, "the wrong lizard might get in. Got any gin?"
"What?"
"I said," said Ford, with an increasing air of urgency creeping into his voice, "have you got any gin?"
"I'll look. Tell me about the lizards."
Ford shrugged again.
"Some people say that the lizards are the best thing that ever happenned to them," he said. "They're completely wrong of course, completely and utterly wrong, but someone's got to say it."
"But that's terrible," said Arthur.
"Listen, bud," said Ford, "if I had one Altairian dollar for every time I heard one bit of the Universe look at another bit of the Universe and say 'That's terrible' I wouldn't be sitting here like a lemon looking for a gin.”

We in the US, we just keep on electing lizards.

[ggamer]

I looked into this for a discussion on another forum, and the whole issue seems way overblown.

The South African government has had the power to remove farmers with market-rate compensation ever since the end of Apartheid, it's an eminent domain type of law. The law change just meant they don't have to offer you market-rate anymore. That means the government would be free to e.g. offer some compensation that's between 0% and 100%, while currently they can always do it if they offer 100%. So, with the law change a more reasonable prediction of how a law like that would be used would be to offer some fractional amount of compensation, say 70% of market rate. This could be used as a threat which would encourage people to just sell their land before the government offers you below market rates. So, one or two white farmers could be asked to sell their land at 70% of market rate and suddenly, a whole lot of other farmers would be thinking about selling their land, which would make things much easier for the government than trying to take over a whole lot of farms and distribute them.

I figured as much; some research I did before I went to sleep last night seems to point to all of this bullshit being related to a spate of killings (of black and afrikaner citizens) happening recently and going back to after Apartheid was dismantled. It's just tensions so far, I think as long as the govt keeps a cool head (and maybe heads of this kalah paramilitary shit at the source) they should come out alright.

I think the situation is way more complex then you guys (other then Reelya) are making it out to be. 

It's not just "ooohhh, the whites were bad, lets take stuff away from them to give to the blacks". Apartheid was a complex and legally enforced concept that happened within living memory. There are black people alive today who had their lands seized without or with little restitution and given to white people. On the whole they had over 40 years of legally enforced inequality that's left a huge wealth gap between people, and leaving that to fester isn't exactly a smart idea either.

Ultimately restitution is a very complex question that I don't have any answers at all for, but just saying "muh reverse racism, muh zimbabwe." and trying to ignore the question is absolutely one of the more painful and damaging answers, even if there might be worse ones.

It's a cultural thing, I think. People with more conservative leanings (or more disgustingly, and more often, alt right leanings) in the US are so used to trumpeting the whole horseshit line about slavery happening forever ago that they miss the significance of these situations in SA.

Sorry for derailing the thread!