Maravi

(TALKZIMBABWE) SAfrica land reform now urgent

SAfrica land reform now urgent
Malcolm Al-Jamari - Opinion
Mon, 08 Dec 2008 16:04:00 +0000

DEAR EDITOR – When a handful white people were beaten up during the farm invasions in your country, we saw many pictures published by the international media. I remember vividly one appalling picture of a white farmer lying on a table after being butchered. That was pure evil and that barbaric behaviour should never be condoned by any right thinking people.

Today hundreds of people in Zimbabwe have died from cholera and those pictures are missing. Yesterday I watched a documentary on BBC2 about violence and crime in South Africa, much of it perpetuated by white landowners.

Many black people are encouraged by these landowners to kill each other all in the name of protecting the health and property of the landowner. This documentary took me back to 18th Century America where house negroes fought against field negroes.

I have to say this organised way of belittling the life of the black man, encouraged through the mass media today, will one day come to pass.

A more informed black population in South Africa will one day realise this blatant racism inherent in the mass media and rebel against it. They will soon realise who has been dividing them. Consciousness is something that comes with the passage of time and is unstoppable.

This happened in Zimbabwe, where the leadership (British and Zimbabwean) dilly-dallied with land reform, until the people (mainly through the war vets) took things into their own hands. Such an insurrection is likely to repeat itself in South Africa at some point and is unstoppable.

Bob Marley said: “You can fool some people sometime, but you can’t fool all the people all the time.”

South Africa has been hiding behind the banner of democracy for a very long time and those racist elements in the world today who have been fighting the land reform project in Zimbabwe have been bent on avoiding a repeat of land reclamation in that country.

I say, the tide is turning and those who fail to acknowledge that racism and slavery are long gone, will only have themselves to blame.

We should all now live in harmony and no race should have superiority above another. That was a project of centuries ago, not this day and age.

* Malcolm Al-Jamari is from Trinidad and Tobago and is currently lecturing at LSE.

Labels: LAND REFORM, SOUTH AFRICA

posted by MrK @ 1:32 AM