SA Government Asks For Constitutional Review On Proposed Land Confiscations

firehuntfish said:

Excellent historical point that very few folks are actually aware of... The only natives the Portuguese encountered in 1480 where these Bushmen. The bulk of RSA's black population today actually immigrated from central Africa long after trade, commerce, and civilization was established by the Dutch European settlers in the 1600's. I guess the supporting narrative of the current government is that only the dark-skinned blacks are the rightful owners of the land and that goes for the entire continent whether they got there first or not?

Click to expand...

Portuguese or Dutch?

I have no doubt that land confiscation will be met with fierce resistance in SA. I think that it wouldn’t take much to spark a complete revolt in South Africa as from my observations and conversations they are plenty tired of being “hassled by the man” to use a slang statement from the US. Ignorance can only be tolerated for so long before it comes to blows. The government there should take a hard look at their position. There are many hardcore people in South Africa that will not go gently into that goodnight!

PHOENIX PHIL said:

Portuguese or Dutch?

Click to expand...

According to the history I was given by our tour operator while visiting Cape Town, the Portuguese where the first Europeans to sail there, but the Dutch settled it...

http://www.footprinttravelguides.co...history/arrival-of-europeans-in-south-africa/


Arrival of Europeans in South Africa
Arrival of the Europeans Dutch, Khoi and slave society at the Cape

The first Europeans to make contact with these three different social groups in southern Africa were Portuguese sailors attempting to find routes to the spice islands of Asia. For many years the Portuguese had been pushing further and further south along Africa's western coastline and in 1487 a ship captained by Bartholomew Diaz made it around the Cape of Good Hope and sailed up the eastern coast of southern Africa as far as Algoa Bay. Ten years later another Portuguese sailor, Vasco da Gama, rounded the Cape and continued up the continent's eastern coast before heading further east, eventually to India. Over the next 200 years increasing numbers of Portuguese traders and their Dutch and British competitors began to make the journey to the east via the Cape of Good Hope.

Though they occasionally stopped for fresh water and supplies in some of the more sheltered Cape bays and river mouths, the Portuguese usually tried to give a wide berth to the territory that is now South Africa. Apart from the treacherous coastline they also often encountered a hostile reception from the local inhabitants. Instead the Portuguese had trading and supply posts in present-day Angola and Mozambique where they were able to both resupply their ships on the way to their eastern empire and capture slaves to send to their American colonies. The Dutch were the first European trading power to set up a permanent settlement in South Africa. In 1652 the powerful Dutch East India Company built a fort and established a supply station under the command of Jan Van Riebeeck on a site that later became Cape Town. The idea was that this was to be simply a point where passing Dutch ships could drop in to get fresh supplies and to rest sick members of their crew. The company did not envisage the settlement growing into a larger community and at first, every inhabitant was a company servant.

This situation soon altered, however, when the company decided that it would allow a group of servants who had worked out their contracts to settle close by as independent farmers and supply the post with their produce. Prior to this decision all fresh supplies had been either delivered by sea or brought from the Khoi groups living in and around the Cape Peninsula. These independent settlers were known as burghers and their number was soon increased by the freeing of more servants and the arrival of new settlers from Holland and, after 1685, Huguenots fleeing French anti-protestant legislation.

With the advent of free burghers, the size of the settlement began to increase and some farmers moved out into outlying districts. This brought them into increased conflict with Khoi herders. There were a series of small skirmishes which the Dutch, with their superior weapons, easily won and the Khoi found themselves displaced from more and more land and their herds of cattle diminished. Under these circumstances some began to work for the burghers on their farms, theoretically as free labourers but in effect as little more than slaves. In this early expansion and subjection of the Khoi the seeds of a whole long history of dispossession of the established population of South Africa are apparent. As the settler farming areas expanded they came into contact with San groups whom they systematically slaughtered in revenge for their raids on settler livestock. European and Asian diseases, especially smallpox, also killed many more San and Khoi and by the end of the 18th century they had almost all been either absorbed into the settler economy as servants, pushed into the most marginal mountain and desert areas, such as the Kalahari, or exterminated.

As the settlers moved further to the east and north they encountered environments less conducive to settled agriculture and more suited to pastoralism. Many settlers adopted a life as semi-nomadic trekboers living exclusively by trading their livestock and the products of hunting with the settled colonists in the Western Cape. As they moved east they also began to come into contact with Bantu-speaking Africans, in particular the Xhosa in what is now the Eastern Cape. Trading relations were established between the settlers and Xhosa, and some Xhosa also came to work on settler farms in return for guns and other European imports. As well as trade, however, the settlers and Xhosa also interacted through warfare. Cattle raiding was especially common and some historians argue that settlers also indulged in widespread slave raiding . These battles were, however, inconclusive and a fluid and unstable boundary between the trekboers and Xhosa persisted for many years.

The other factor that began to alter the original function of the settlement was the arrival, in 1658, of a group of slaves captured from the Portuguese in Angola. The company had originally intended that there would be no slaves at the settlement but the company servants and free burghers soon became accustomed to avoiding the hardest and most menial manual tasks and demanded that they be supplied with more slaves. Unlike in the Americas most of these slaves did not come from West Africa but from Asia and Madagascar. They tended not to be owned in large numbers on huge plantations but in small groups, often less than 10, by individual farmers. The balance between the slave and free population of the Cape remained much more even than in West Indian and South American colonies.

There was, however, always a big gender imbalance in both the settler and slave populations, with far more men than women. Sexual encounters between slave owners and their female slaves, or Khoi servants, were frequent and a number of slave owners married freed slaves. Apartheid history taught that the present-day coloured population are the descendants of slaves and passing sailors, but even a cursory reading of the contemporary Dutch and other European reports of the settlement show that it it is probably more accurate to see the present-day Afrikaner and coloured population as having the same ancestry. Another fact about the present-day coloured population that is seldom recognized is that they are frequently the direct descendants of original Khoi inhabitants of the area. This is especially so in the Eastern and Northern Cape, where there was never a large slave population and certainly no sailors.

A number of slaves managed to escape from their captivity and joined up with still-independent groups of Khoi and miscellaneous European and mixed-race adventurers beyond the frontiers of the Dutch colony. Here they formed new and unusual political groupings and often existed by raiding both European settlers and African groups in the interior. The best-known of these bands were the so-called Griquas. With European horses and guns they became an important political force in the South African interior right through until the mid-19th century.

Arrival of the British

During the 18th century Dutch economic and political power began to wane. Just as the Dutch had superseded the Portuguese they were themselves challenged by the rising power of the British. In 1795 the British sailed into False Bay and annexed the Dutch colony (The Battle of Muizenberg). The British were concerned that the French, with whom they were fighting in Europe, would take over the strategic port. In a general peace settlement of 1803 the colony was returned to the Dutch but in 1806 the British reconquered the territory and their sovereignty was finally accepted by other European powers in the peace settlement of 1816.

The British were only really interested in the Cape as a staging post and strategic port to protect trade with their new Asian empire. The colony was not profitable and neither the British government nor business took much interest in the new possession. There were, however, two important events in the early years of British rule that were to have crucial impacts on the subsequent history of South Africa.

The first factor was the British authorities' concern over persistent and inconclusive fighting along the colony's eastern frontier with the Xhosa. Some Xhosa groups had taken advantage of the instability in the colony to re-establish themselves to the west of the Fish River. The British decided that the only way to stop the persistent battles was to push the Xhosa back across the Fish River and establish a secure and clear frontier. During the first years of their rule they cleared the Xhosa occupying this area and tried to ban trekboers from having any contact with them. It was decided that what was needed was a group of permanent settlers on new farms in the area from which the Xhosa had been cleared in order to keep them apart from the trekboers.

In 1820 the British parliament agreed to release £50,000 to transport settlers from Britain to occupy this area. The money was used to send out 4000 settlers, with an additional 1000 paying their own passage to the region. These people became known as the 1820 Settlersand formed the nucleus of the subsequent British settler community.

Though the British authorities had intended that they should become farmers and hence occupy the disputed territory, most of the settlers were from urban artisan backgrounds and few had the skills or inclination necessary to become successful cultivators in the difficult and unfamiliar environment of the Eastern Cape. Most of them quickly gravitated towards the small towns, especially Port Elizabeth and Grahamstown, where they used their previous experience to become traders or skilled artisans. Their presence introduced an important new element to the equation, not least cultural, and 1820 Settler attitudes towards things such as the freedom of the press and towards the proper role of government played an important part in shaping 19th-century Cape settler society.

It soon became apparent that the British attempts to create a permanent border between the Xhosa and settlers had failed and cattle raiding backwards and forwards across the border continued. The Xhosa tried on numerous occasions to reclaim their land, occupied now by the settlers, but these attempts always failed, despite many initial successes. The Frontier Wars between Xhosa and settler continued for the next half century with Xhosa independence and land occupation being progressively eroded until their remaining areas (which became known as Transkei), were eventually incorporated into the Cape Colony.

The other fundamental change that British rule brought about was the ending of the slave trade and then the total banning of slavery. The peripheral role of South Africa in the British colonial empire and the dispersed nature of its slave population meant that it was seldom considered in debates about slavery, which instead concentrated on the massive slave plantations of the West Indies. Nevertheless, when the British parliament eventually decided to call an end to the institution that many felt was both inhumane and, more importantly, not beneficial to the empire's economy, it was also banned in South Africa. In 1834 slaves throughout the British Empire were officially emancipated, though they were to remain with their owners as apprentices until 1838. Slave owners were also offered compensation of one third of the value of their slaves.

Though emancipation provided some slaves with new opportunities, in reality many of them continued to live very similar lives, carrying out the same heavy manual labour, under extremely harsh conditions, on the same Cape farms.

Nevertheless, many of the original Dutch settlers were extremely unhappy about the emancipation of slaves. To make things worse the British government, after extensive lobbying by British missionaries working in South Africa, also prevented them from introducing legislation aimed at tying both freed slaves and Khoi servants to individual farms as indentured labourers. The Dutch settlers had already been annoyed by the way their extremely loose system of administration had been reformed by the British, making it more difficult for individual farmers to impose their own law on their particular district. Many trekboers in the eastern districts also felt that the British were not quick enough in coming to their support when they had cattle raided by Xhosa groups to the east. Now they were not only losing a large proportion of their 'property' (slaves) but were being prevented from making sure they had a captive (cheap) labour supply. Though they were offered compensation at one third of the value of their slaves this had to be claimed in London. Many slave owners, therefore, sold their compensation rights to agents at usually about one fifth of the slave's value.

In response to these complaints a number of Dutch settlers decided that they would set out with their families and servants in search of new land beyond the British colonial boundaries. Between 1835 and 1840 around 5000 people left the Cape colony and headed east in a movement that later became known as the Great Trek. It tended to be the trekboers from the eastern areas, who had fewer possessions and little investment in established farms who took part in this movement. The settlers taking part in the trek became known as Voortrekkers and their experiences beyond the colonial frontiers became fertile ground for 20th-century Afrikaner nationalism. One thing not often celebrated in the national myths that grew up around the Great Trek is that accompanying the treks were a large number of Khoi servants and a small number of freed slaves still economically and socially bound to their masters/patrons.

PHOENIX PHIL said:

Portuguese or Dutch?

Click to expand...

The Portuguese built Ft Jesus, current day Mombasa, sometime in the 1500’s. They had outposts from Angola all the way to Kenya. The Omani Arabs stoped their progress.

Maybe all these CBL farms have the advantage, they can just release the loins when the mob's come for the land!

Bullthrower338 said:

I have no doubt that land confiscation will be met with fierce resistance in SA. I think that it wouldn’t take much to spark a complete revolt in South Africa as from my observations and conversations they are plenty tired of being “hassled by the man” to use a slang statement from the US. Ignorance can only be tolerated for so long before it comes to blows. The government there should take a hard look at their position. There are many hardcore people in South Africa that will not go gently into that goodnight!

Click to expand...

Unfortunately, Gun regulations

Aaron Nietfeld said:

Maybe all these CBL farms have the advantage, they can just release the loins when the mob's come for the land!

Click to expand...

Releasing the loins has been the downfall of many a good man.

Tom Hawk said:

Unfortunately, Gun regulations

Click to expand...

Yet there are plenty of guns there and men that use them well.

Bullthrower338 said:

I have no doubt that land confiscation will be met with fierce resistance in SA. I think that it wouldn’t take much to spark a complete revolt in South Africa as from my observations and conversations they are plenty tired of being “hassled by the man” to use a slang statement from the US. Ignorance can only be tolerated for so long before it comes to blows. The government there should take a hard look at their position. There are many hardcore people in South Africa that will not go gently into that goodnight!

Click to expand...

The white minority of the RSA can be as tired as they want to be of being "hasseled", but "revolts" can not succeed when the revolutionary group only makes up 9% of the population. They can be as hard core as they want, but if it came to actual warfare, they would be crushed. However many guns and stout hearted men they might have - it would not be nearly enough. The old South African regime collapsed and at the time, they controlled the Armed Forces and had under arms the finest light infantry in the world. In the end, they realized there was no way that they could hang on through military force against a real revolution. de Klerk cut the best deal he could. The situation now would be infinitely worse. A few hunting rifles would make very little difference in the end. And just like Rhodesia, the Euro/American world would at best look the other way if not actually condoning the result.

Bullthrower338 said:

Yet there are plenty of guns there and men that use them well.

Click to expand...

That’s good

Red Leg said:

The white minority of the RSA can be as tired as they want to be of being "hasseled", but "revolts" can not succeed when the revolutionary group only makes up 9% of the population. They can be as hard core as they want, but if it came to actual warfare, they would be crushed. However many guns and stout hearted men they might have - it would not be nearly enough. The old South African regime collapsed and they controlled the Armed Forces and had under arms the finest light infantry in the world. A few hunting rifles would make very little difference in the end. And just like Rhodesia, the Euro/American world would at best look the other way if not actually condoning the result.

Click to expand...

All they need to do is get to the Missle centers and blow the enemy up. While we’re at it, they could also put tannerite around their stronghold and have sniper shoot a mile away,

This could never happen here in the U.S. —— yet

Tom Hawk said:

All they need to do is get to the Missle centers and blow the enemy up. While we’re at it, they could also put tannerite around their stronghold and have sniper shoot a mile away,

Click to expand...

According to your profile you are too young to be drinking, so I assume you attempting to be humorous.

Red Leg said:

The white minority of the RSA can be as tired as they want to be of being "hasseled", but "revolts" can not succeed when the revolutionary group only makes up 9% of the population. They can be as hard core as they want, but if it came to actual warfare, they would be crushed. However many guns and stout hearted men they might have - it would not be nearly enough. The old South African regime collapsed and at the time, they controlled the Armed Forces and had under arms the finest light infantry in the world. In the end, they realized there was no way that they could hang on through military force against a real revolution. de Klerk cut the best deal he could. The situation now would be infinitely worse. A few hunting rifles would make very little difference in the end. And just like Rhodesia, the Euro/American world would at best look the other way if not actually condoning the result.

Click to expand...

Where would you rank the RSA’s war fighting capability today? I am asking this in all sincerity as I would consider you an authority on the subject of military capabilities.
Cheers,
Cody

They are now a Third World military power - but still the strongest by far on the African continent if we exclude Egypt (whose armed forces are much more powerful).

Look, let's all be military analysts for a moment. There are roughly 4 mil whites in the RSA. That leaves a total male population of roughly 2 mil. However, Africaners only make up approximately half that number (I think most South African Boers would agree with me that the white "English" and other non black members of the population are very unlikely to join them in a suicidal revolt.) So that leaves a million males - all ages - from new-born to great grandpa. From a pure mathematics perspective that leaves us perhaps 100,000 potential guerillas? But of course the pool isn't nearly that large. Not all are fit. Many would think such a revolt was little more than a foolish quixotic form of suicide and would not participate. Others would quickly leave the country. And unlike Maoist inspired revolutions, a white resistance could not simply melt into the general population. The leader of such a revolt would be lucky to have a couple of thousand men potentially under arms. But it won't even be nearly that high. How many South Africans even have access to a weapon? The combat ratios would be infinitely worse than the Boer Commandos faced against the British in the Second Boer War, and their families would be at even higher risk of treatment far worse than the British meted out in their concentration camps. Non of that worked out particularly well. And of course, there would be no international supplier of mausers like there was at the end of the 19th century.

A guy with a rifle can indeed be an effective adversary. And I think we can all agree that the South African PHs and hunters we know would represent very fine riflemen indeed. But not for very long when being hunted by an Army and a national police force. And almost none of those guys with a rifle in the RSA have had any real military training. However "third world" any given rifle company of infantry opposing them would be in any particular fire-fight, the fire-power differential alone inevitably would be decisive.

Red Leg said:

They are now a Third World military power - but still the strongest by far on the African continent if we exclude Egypt (whose armed forces are much more powerful).

Look, let's all be military analysts for a moment. There are roughly 4 mil whites in the RSA. That leaves a total male population of roughly 2 mil. However, Africaners only make up approximately half that number (I think most South African Boers would agree with me that the white "English" and other non black members of the population are very unlikely to join them in a suicidal revolt.) So that leaves a million males - all ages - from new-born to great grandpa. From a pure mathematics perspective that leaves us perhaps 100,000 potential guerillas? But of course the pool isn't nearly that large. Not all are fit. Many would think such a revolt was little more than a foolish quixotic form of suicide and would not participate. Others would quickly leave the country. And unlike Maoist inspired revolutions, a white resistance could not simply melt into the general population. The leader of such a revolt would be lucky to have a couple of thousand men potentially under arms. But it won't even be nearly that high. How many South Africans even have access to a weapon? The combat ratios would be infinitely worse than the Boer Commandos face against the British in the Second Boer War. And that didn't work out well. And of course, there would be no international supplier of mausers like there was at the end of the 19th century.

A guy with a rifle can indeed be an effective adversary. But not for very long. And almost none of those guys with a rifle in the RSA have had any real military training. And however "third world" any given rifle company of infantry opposing them would be in any particular fire-fight, the fire-power differential alone inevitably would be decisive.

Click to expand...

Thank you for the excellent analysis. I completely agree that the “revolt” would be quite futile, I was thinking more along the lines of unnecessary bloodshed due to a move by the government to take farms. To think that a farmer, his wife and maybe a couple teenage boys could even hold off an assault of a raider team would be quite naive.
My point being I don’t think it will be a quiet take over of the farms. I pray that there is some one thinking this through in the Government and it doesn’t come to this.
I agree that the rest of the world would look at this and somehow justify it in their minds.

Bullthrower338 said:

Thank you for the excellent analysis. I completely agree that the “revolt” would be quite futile, I was thinking more along the lines of unnecessary bloodshed due to a move by the government to take farms. To think that a farmer, his wife and maybe a couple teenage boys could even hold off an assault of a raider team would be quite naive.
My point being I don’t think it will be a quiet take over of the farms. I pray that there is some one thinking this through in the Government and it doesn’t come to this.
I agree that the rest of the world would look at this and somehow justify it in their minds.

Click to expand...

I recently had a long discussion about this with a black South African member of a major NGO. I think educated, black South Africans truly believe the white minority is, for the foreseeable future, an essential element of national economic prosperity. They are not blind to the Zimbabwean case study to their north. Sadly, their percent of the black population is perhaps even less than that of the white minority.

Look out the window the next time you are on short final into Johannesburg. The sprawling townships (slums) are larger and more fetid today than they were when Mandela took over. That is the breeding ground of a real socialist revolutionary movement. "Land reform" or disenfranchising the remaining white minority business owners are two of the very few levers left for the black government to pull in order to placate that simmering mob - if only for a while. I am very concerned that self-preservation will cause the current government to eventually resort to almost anything to hold onto power. And if the mob takes over, then all bets are off.

Red Leg said:

I recently had a long discussion about this with a black South African member of a major NGO. I think educated, black South Africans truly believe the white minority is, for the foreseeable future, an essential element of national economic prosperity. They are not blind to the Zimbabwean case study to their north. Sadly, their percent of the black population is perhaps even less than that of the white minority.

Look out the window the next time you are on short final into Johannesburg. The sprawling townships (slums) are larger and more fetid today than they were when Mandela took over. That is the breeding ground of a real socialist revolutionary movement. "Land reform" or disenfranchising the remaining white minority business owners are two of the very few levers left for the black government to pull in order to placate that simmering mob - if only for a while. I am very concerned that self-preservation will cause the current government to eventually resort to almost anything to hold onto power. And if the mob takes over, then all bets are off.

Click to expand...

Absolutely, a mob has no reasoning capabilities and feeds off of its own actions. We are not immune from it here in our own cities as well. Very realistic scenario in many corners of the world these days!

As an outsider looking in, it seems the white diaspora is only growing.

I heard from friends recently, that have gone to the same church in Benoni for over 50 years. Most weeks at least one member has suffered a home invasion. Around once a month, friends are beaten in a home invasion. In the last 2-4 years they have lost about 1/4 of their members to white ruled commonwealth countries. They dread finding out which friends will be leaving next.

Benoni has lost much of its allure over the years, but it's not like it is a dump. The area where they live is 2,000-3,000 sf homes on half acre with many having a pool and tennis court.

It must be difficult growing old in your home and in your homeland and not feeling safe or being safe. My heart goes out to all affected.