Green paper is 'attack' on white farmers

2012-05-31 17:25

Pretoria - The green paper on land reform is a document of racial mobilisation against white farmers, the FW de Klerk Foundation said on Thursday.

"If you have read the green paper, you will realise the degree of racial aggression that it contains... it is impossible to ignore," executive director Dave Steward said at a conference on the document, organised by AfriForum in Pretoria.

"The inflammatory historic analysis is irreconcilable with the Constitution's goal of healing the divisions of the past."

Steward said the green papers' characterisation of white farmers as colonialists came close to hate speech.

Violates values

He said the statement in the green paper that "all anti-colonial struggles are, at the core, about two things: repossession of land lost through force or deceit and restoring centrality of the indigenous culture", violated the values of equality, non-racialism and human dignity.

"It is absolutely unacceptable to state that any cultural group is more central than any other."

According to Steward, the green paper would have a great impact on commercial farming, domestic and foreign investment, and race relations. He said 90% of the farms that had been transferred to blacks had failed.

"It is simply a reflection of the truth that successful farming requires a great deal of capital, a great deal of experience and training, and often, a great deal of luck.

"It would be the height of foolishness to embark on a land reform policy that would destroy the ability of our farms to feed our people."

If the government had any hopes for reconciliation and national unity it was imperative that all South Africans be treated fairly.

"It was unfair for whites to do this to black South Africans under apartheid, and it would be equally unfair for blacks to do so to white South Africans in pursuit of their ideology of the national democratic revolution," Steward said.

- SAPA