The South African Chamber for Agricultural Development (SACADA) which acts as an umbrella organisation is integrated by several right wing organisations including the Freedom Front (FF) led by Viljoen and the secret Afrikaner Broederbond. As South African Defence Force (SADF) Commander in Chief during the Apartheid regime, General Viljoen personally ordered attacks on so-called "African National Congress Targets" including the blowing up of suspected anti-apartheid activists and critics.
Former spy Craig Williamson recently produced classified State Security Council documents indicating that Viljoen was also responsible for Stratcom (Strategic Communications), a covert organisation involved in frame-ups, political assassinations, bombings, torture, covert propaganda and "dirty tricks campaigns" '
The Freedom Front is "moderate" in comparison to Eugene Terre'Blanche's far-right Afrikaner Resistance Movement (AWB). But the Front is still a racist political movement committed to the ideal of a
The SACADA-Freedom Front initiative has nonetheless the political backing of the African National Congress as well as the personal blessing of President Nelson Mandela who has delegated Mpumalanga (East Transvaal) Premier Matthews Phosa to the SACADA Board. All the other governors are members of the Freedom Front.
Premier Phosa, a distinguished ANC politician and among the most prosperous black businessmen in Mpumalanga province, is the architect of a proposed "regional economic block" between Eastern Transvaal, Mozambique and Swaziland. Premier Phosa is not only firmly behind the SACADA-Freedom Front initiative, he has also contributed to laying the political ground work for the ex12 International Viewpoint pansion of White Afrikaner business interests into neighbouring countries. Phosa informed the provincial legislature in 1995 that "he is communicating with General Viljoen to ensure that their separate initiatives are complementary". 2
In discussions with President Mandela, General Viljoen had argued that: "settling Afrikaner farmers would stimulate the economies of neighbouring states, would provide food and employment for locals, and that this would stem the flow of illegal immigrants into South Africa". 3
Viljoen has also held high level meetings on Afrikaner agricultural investments with representatives of the European Union, the United Nations and other donor agencies.* SACADA has approached some 12 African countries "interested in White South African farmers"≤ Meanwhile, the government is negotiating with several African governments on behalf of SACADA. The ANC government is anxious to facilitate the expansion of corporate agri-business into neighbouring countries. President Mandela has endorsed a venture set up in 1994 under the South African Development Corporation (SADEVCO), under which the government of Congo-Brazzaville granted Boer farmers 99 year leases on agricultural land. Mandela called on African nations "to accept the migrants as a kind of foreign aid".®
An earlier trek of White farmers to Zambia and Congo-Brazzaville in the early 1990s met with mixed results. But the impetus of that scheme was based on the resettlement of individual (often bankrupt) Afrikaner farmers without political backing,
Exporting Apartheid financial support and the legitimacy of the New South Africa. The SADACA plan is tied to the interests of corporate agribusiness.
African countries have on the whole welcomed the inflow of Afrikaner investments. They don't have much choice. Nowadays, the Bretton Woods institutions and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) call the shots, invariably requiring (indebted) countries to accept an "open door to foreign capital" policy. In this context, the liberalisation of trade and investment under donor supervision, tends to support the extension of Afrikaner business interests throughout the region. And in the sleazy environment shaped by trans-national corporations and international creditors, there is no shortage of corrupt politicians and senior bureaucrats who can be co-opted or invited to become the "business partners" of South African and other foreign investors. Expropriation of peasant lands
If carried through, the "Food Corridor" project could alter the rural landscape of the Southern African region, requiring the uprooting and displacement of small farmers over an extensive territory. Millions ot nectares of the best farmland are to be handed over to South African agri-business. The Boers will manage large scale commercial farms using the rural people both as "labour tenants" as well as seasonal agricultural workers. The "Food Corridor" will displace the pre-existing agricultural system. It will probably be a fatal blow to subsistence agriculture and the peasant cash crop economy. It will displace local agricultural markets and aggravate the conditions of endemic famine prevailing in the region. While the project is meant to "bring development", and "transfer much needed agricultural expertise", it is much more a process of "exporting Apartheid" to neighbouring countries.
This process fits into the package of IMF-World Bank sponsored economic reforms being imposed across southern Africa. The expropriation of peasant lands is often demanded by Africa's creditors as a condition for the rescheduling of Paris Club debts. Peasant lands (which formally belonged to the State) are sold (at very low prices) or leased out to international agribusiness (on 50 or 99 year concessions). The meagre proceeds of the land sales will be used to service the external debt.
The World Bank has put forth land legis-
June 1997 #289 13
Telecom, Air Mauritius, State Bank, into practice. * [RL/AN]
* South Africa/Mozambique lation in Sub-Saharan Africa which abrogates the right to land of millions of small-holders. Identical land legislation is enforced throughout the region, drafted under technical advice from the World Bank Legal Department. "The constitution [in Mozambique] says that the land is the property of the State and cannot be sold or mortgaged. There has been strong pressure particularly from the United States and the World Bank for land to be privatised and to allow mortgages." -
South African companies and banks are also participating in neighbouring countries' privatisation programmes (a central part of World-Bank sponsored Structural Adjustment Programmes). Johannesburg and Capetown investors are acquiring, at rock bottom prices, the ownership of former state assets in mining, public utilities and agriculture in a number of "front-line" states. Experimental farms, government research stations, State-owned plantations and seed producing facilities have been put on the auction block. With the deregulation of agricultural markets under World Bank advice, state marketing systems for agricultural produce are either closed down or taken over by private
Derogating customary land rights
Both SACADA and the World Bank stress their desire to "protect traditional land rights." The small peasantry is to be "protected" through the establishment of "customary land reserves" established in the immediate vicinity of the new white commercial farms. In practice, under the new land legislation, the majority of the rural people will be caged into small territorial enclaves ("communal lands") while the bulk of the best agricultural land will be sold or leased to private investors. Cattle herders, and peasant communities which practice shifting cultivation over a large land area, will henceforth be prosecuted for encroaching on lands earmarked for commercial farming, often without their prior knowledge. Impoverished by the macro-economic reforms. with no access to credit and modern farm inputs, these customary enclaves will constitute "labour reserves" for large scale agri-business. Afrikaner farms in Mozambique
SACADA has plans to invest in CongoKinshasa (ex-Zaire), Zambia and Angola. But Mozambique is the test case. President Joaquim Chissano of Mozambique and President Nelson Mandela signed an intergovernmental agreement in May 1996 which grants Afrikaner agri-business territorial concessions and development rights covering eight million hectares in six provinces. According to one South African official, "Mozambique needs the technical expertise and the money, and we have the people We favour an area which is not heavily populated because it is an Achilles heal if there are too many people on the land For the Boers, Land is next to God and the Bible."
The "socialist" Frelimo government will ensure that there is no encroachment on SACADA's concessionary areas in Mozambique. Rural small-holders and subsistence farmers (who never possess legal land titles) will be expelled or transferred onto marginal lands. In contrast, senior military personnel and government ministers who seek to become "business partners" of international (Afrikaner) agri-business have already been granted concessions over millions of hectares of land which is already occupied by the peasantry."
Through the establishment of Mosagrius (a joint venture company), SACADA is already firmly established in the fertile valley of the Lugenda river. The Boers also have their eyes on agricultural areas along the Zambezi and Limpopo rivers as well as on the road and railway facilities linking Lichinga, Niassa's capital to the deep see port of Nagala. The railway line is being rehabilitated and modernised (by a French contractor) with development aid provided by France.!
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