Zuma tears into Mulder over land reform

[tabatha]

President Jacob Zuma strongly rebuked Freedom Frong Plus leader Pieter Mulder in Parliament on Thursday following his controversial statements on land reform. Responding to the the debate on his State Of The Nation address, Zuma said Mulder had "stunned the whole country" with his "bold denial of historical facts about land dispossession".

"The land question is one of the most emotive issues in our history and present, and must be handled with utmost care, and not in the careless and callous manner that Honourable Mulder handled it," said Zuma. Mulder on Wednesday raised the ire of many South Africans by claiming "black 'bantu-speaking' people had no historical claim" to 40% of the country's arable land. "There is sufficient proof that there were no bantu-speaking people in the Western Cape and north-western Cape," Mulder told Parliament.

Zuma offered a wry smile and suggested Groenewald needed a lesson in history.

http://mg.co.za/article/2012-02-16-zuma-tears-into-mulder-over-land-reform

What Mulder failed to point out that there were San peoples living in the Western Cape and they had claim to that land, even though Bantu-speaking peoples only traveled south as far as the river that divides the Eastern and Western Cape. The reason, I found out in Guns, Germs, and Steel, was that their crops would only grow in summer-rainfall areas, whereas the Western Cape is a winter-rain Mediterranean climate.

[David__77]

1. Ah Mulder is just saying the same thing the racist whites have said for more than a century.

Of course it was the European who he would allege "tamed the wilderness" and even "evangelized the savages," or some such thing (in other more politic wording).

I think Zuma was very restrained in his response. The relations with the Afrikaners has been more than cordial. The national democratic revolution has barely touched them in fact.