South Africa -- Mugabe's Madness is Spreading

For many months now racist elements in the South African government have been pressuring President Thabo Mbeki to emulate Robert Mugabe's policies in neighboring Zimbabwe and to expropriate white-owned farmland. [previous posts here, here, here, and here] Now it begins.

BBC reports:

S African white farm to be seized

South Africa says it will for the first time force a white farmer to sell his land under a redistribution plan.

The decision was announced by the Commission on Restitution of Land Rights, set up to return to black people land lost under apartheid.

An official said talks to agree on a price for the farm had failed and the farmer has vowed to challenge the move.

South Africa's government says it wants to hand over about a third of white-owned farm land by 2014.

Read it here.

Previously the government had been basing land transfers on a policy of "willing seller/willing buyer" but radicals protested that was going to slow and demanded immediate expropriation. The hope is that land redistribution will bring prosperity to SA's black underclass, but in Zimbabwe it brought nothing but ruin to the nation's economy. Mugabe's poisonous blend of Marxism, Maoism and Racism promises to do the same for SA if widely adopted.

Let us sincerely hope that moderation will prevail in SA and that it will not plunge mindlessly down the mad course Mugabe has blazed.

CNN adds this information:

The deputy president [Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka -- pictured above] said last July that the government wants all land restitution claims settled within the next three years. The government, she said, seeks to deliver 30 percent of the country's agricultural land to people disadvantaged by apartheid by 2014. If necessary, she said it would revise the current willing buyer, willing seller principle.

South African officials have repeatedly said they do not plan to emulate Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe's seizure of white-owned farms, which many say contributed to the collapse of that country's farm-based economy.

But Mugabe's policies have made him hugely popular among black South Africans, while land reform here appears stalled.

Read it here.

This is not strictly correct. Ms. Phumzile has been only the most prominent of many S. African officials who have been openly demanding that President Mbeki emulate Mugabe's redistribution policies.