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President Cyril Ramaphosa. Photo: SA Government
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Bolton: Trump wanted to grant white South African farmers asylum

Neocon John Bolton recounts in his new book how he was dismayed that President Trump in May 2019 was less interested in discussing attacks on Iran than in the terrible treatment that white farmers in South Africa are faced with.

Published: June 24, 2020, 8:11 am

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    Bolton served as the Assistant to President Donald Trump for National Security Affairs (NSA) from April 2018 to September 2019. He repeatedly called for the termination of the Iran nuclear deal, from which the US withdrew in May 2018.

    His book about his tenure in the Trump administration, The Room Where It Happened, was published to scupper Trump’s chances of reelection in November. Bolton went ahead with publication knowing full well he had not been given the required authorization.

    Bolton reportedly said on page 383:

    “When [Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Gen. Joseph Dunford] tried to get more specific on what we might do and when in response to an Iranian attack, Trump said the Gulf Arabs could pay. Dunford kept trying to get Trump to focus on specific options along a graduated ladder of possible responses, but somehow, we veered off to South Africa and what Trump was hearing about the treatment of white farmers, asserting he wanted to grant them asylum and citizenship.”

    In August 2018, President Trump called for Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to “closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers” after South African president Cyril Ramaphosa began the process of seizing white farmers’ land without compensation.

    Pompeo told the South African government earlier this year that “expropriation would be disastrous for the economy”.  Rampahosa – a mining-trade-unionist-turned-billionaire – quickly repudiated the USA Secretary of State by saying: “Land reform is an essential part of inclusive growth.”

    Despite warnings, Ramaphosa is moving forward with his plans and squatters have also been illegally occupying privately-owned land.

    Prof. Ruth Hall, a British Marxist, is the person agitating for the nationalization of all white farmland in South Africa. She is pushing Ramaphosa into adopting even more radical anti-white policies than he has hitherto been prepared to countenance.

    Holding a Ph.D. in politics from Oxford, with dozens of quasi-Marxist articles in academic journals to her name, she is the chief ideologue of the government panel. Hall routinely writes reports and memos, about the coming “land revolution” in which white, mostly Afrikaner, farmers would lose their land, and the country would lose its food security, much as happened in Tanzania and Zimbabwe.  Hall, by her own admission,  has been advising ten government ministers on what to do.

    If land ownership reverts to the state and African peasants are encouraged to replicate the disastrous ujamaa socialism of former President Julius Nyerere of Tanzania in the 1970s and early 1980s, famine will surely follow.

    Despite getting $10 billion in handouts from the Scandinavian countries, Tanzania’s GDP halved during the ujamaa period under Nyerere’s rule from 1967 to 1975. According to a Swedish report, Sweden alone donated $7 billion to Tanzania from 1960 to 2013.

    As of 2011, 237 858 Zimbabwean households had been provided with access to land under the programme. A total of 10 816,886 hectares had been acquired since 2000, compared to the 3 498 444 purchased from voluntary sellers between 1980 and 1998.

    By 2013, every white-owned farm in Zimbabwe had been either expropriated or confirmed for future redistribution. And although the compulsory acquisition of farmland without compensation was discontinued in early 2018, land reform has had an incredibly negative effect on the Zimbabwe’s economy and directly contributed to its collapse, Craig Richardson noted in his book The Collapse of Zimbabwe in the Wake of the 2000–2003 Land Reforms.

    There has been a significant drop in total farm output which has led to instances of starvation and famine. And African farmers who received redistributed land now unashamedly make use of child labour.

    On 4 July 2019 the Dutch parliament or Second Chamber had accepted a resolution denouncing land confiscation “on the basis of skin colour” in South Africa. In their resolution the Dutch government was requested to “clearly take position against the proposed land expropriation without compensation from white farmers in South Africa, [which is] in conflict with human rights and to exert pressure on South Africa to abandon it”.

    The Dutch resolution cited both the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, as well as the African Human Rights Charter which “prohibited the arbitrary confiscation of property and especially on the basis of skin colour”.

    January saw 20 registered farm attacks attacks but no incidents of murder on farms, according to TLU SA’s official Incidents Register, which has been kept up to date since 1990. In comparison, 35 farm attacks and six farm murders were reported during the first month of 2019.

    Maj-Genl Chris van Zyl, deputy general manager of TLU SA said: “The positive trend can probably be attributed to a bigger safety and security awareness under farm and smallholding residents, as well as the quick reaction by neighbours and farm patrols. However, the continuing trend of almost one attack per day – of which we are aware of – is still unacceptably high.”

    TLU SA is worried that farm attacks and murders are on the rise instead of declining when looking at the bigger picture comparing the total amount of incidents of 2019 to those of 2018.

    “The data of 2019 in comparison with the data from 2018 still show a rise in both the number of registered attacks – 419 to 394 – and the number of murders – 56 to 54,” says Maj-Genl Van Zyl. “In light of this TLU SA is still calling on the government to pay more attention to the prevalence of attacks and other crime on farms.”

    Meanwhile, a US Federal District Court Judge Royce Lamberth has cleared the way for John Bolton to be criminally prosecuted for violating his non-disclosure agreement and revealing classified material without authorization.

    Lamberth agreed with the Trump Administration that Bolton had included classified information in his published book and he could be criminally prosecuted for violating his signed agreements to protect classified material.  The White House had submitted evidence in camera detailing the breach in security.

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