SOUTH AFRICA / AFRIQUE DU SUD

Reports on Ethnic Relations  /  Rapports sur les relations éthniques

08 / 00 / 2002 

MAIL & GUARDIAN (South Africa)

The article: "The government is running scared"

A series of broken promises and undemocratic practices by the government has added weight to the Landless People's Movement (LPM), which is now seeking international support -- precisely the outcome the government hoped to avoid, said the grass-roots organisation this week.

After the arrest of 72 of its members during a march on Gauteng Premier Mbhazima Shilowa's office, the LPM joined forces with La Via Campesina, an international organisation for disenfranchised rural people.

The March for the Landless, which is planned for August 31, has now been renamed the International March of the Landless.

Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe has been invited to attend but has not given a firm answer. The LPM is optimistic he will at least send a representative.

"The government is trying to destroy us but actually they are giving us more power," says the LPM's national organiser, Mangaliso Khubeka.

"If the government was doing the right thing for us we wouldn't be with La Via Campesina. The government has pushed us into taking that direction."

The LPM says the government is "running scared" from the demands of the landless. According to the LPM, the government is using increasingly repressive tactics to silence the movement because it is worried that comparisons with Zimbabwe will scare foreign investors away.

The leadership of the LPM has avoided comment on Mugabe's policies as a whole but it sees land reform in Zimbabwe as a success.

"What we are striving for is land. The people in Zimbabwe are getting land by taking it," says Khubeka.

The LPM says Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs Thoko Didiza agreed on two occasions to organise a land summit to speed up land reform -- but the group says she reneged on her promise both times.

The LPM has accused the government of forgetting the promises it made to win the election.

"We elected a black government and we thought they would work for us. But now they are the ones destroying our lives," says Thandi Macuvani, the LPM's Eastern Cape representative.

The National Land Committee (NLC), a sister organisation of the LPM, reiterated this disappointment.

"The right to [protest] is a first-generation right," said an NLC spokesperson. "We struggled for that right and it is unfortunate that the government thinks it has the power [to stop us]."

The LPM has stationed itself a few kilometres from the Nasrec exhibition centre to highlight its rejection of the credibility of the summit.

The movement has rejected Nasrec as a forum for those "who are drinking tea and whisky with the government". It says the fee of R1500 a person to attend workshops at Nasrec excludes the country's poor from participation.

The LPM alleged that squatters were removed from informal settlements close to Johannesburg in order to hide poverty during the summit. In response, it has organised bus tours of Gauteng's squatter settlements for journalists and delegates on August 30.

The LPM has brought 5000 of its members to Johannesburg for the summit. They'll live in open halls at Shareworld, near Nasrec, and will attend Saturday's march.