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Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site watrose.UUCP
Path: utzoo!watmath!watnot!watrose!gdvsmit
From: gdvsmit@watrose.UUCP (Riel Smit)
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: South Africa Again
Message-ID: <7519@watrose.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 12-Aug-85 17:48:27 EDT
Article-I.D.: watrose.7519
Posted: Mon Aug 12 17:48:27 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 15-Aug-85 02:45:11 EDT
References: <1053@ihlpg.UUCP>
Distribution: net
Organization: U of Waterloo, Ontario
Lines: 36
Summary: not all homelands are arid and unproductive

In article <1053@ihlpg.UUCP> berman@ihlpg.UUCP (Andy Berman) writes:
>                                            a regime that
>forces Black women and children onto arid and unproductive
>"homelands" to face starvation and disease.
>
Ever been to one of these "arid" homelands?  Or do you blindly believe
the ANC propaganda about them?  I have been to most of them and have
seen ANC films about them and either the ANC is mostly lying through
their teeth, or world maps are all wrong.  Some of these homelands
contain some of the most beautiful areas and some of the best
agricultural land in Southern Africa (e.g. Transkei, KwaZulu, Gazankulu,
Venda and parts of Lebowa) - to such an extent that many white farmers
will give an arm and a leg to be able to have their farms there.

Please do not misunderstand me - I am not defending the South African
government's homeland policy (for the most part it is indefensible),
I am just correcting a widely held misconception about "arid" homelands.

Yes, there are homelands that are arid (Bophuthatswana for example),
but these homelands were not arbitrarily declared homelands and then
all the blacks shipped off there.  The nations/tribes/people living
there have done so for the past 100-300 years (some even longer).  It
is their "anchestral lands".  At least a large proportion of the people
living there have asked for it to be their homeland -  just as some Indian
and Inuit peolpe are asking for a homeland in what some people would describe
as arid areas.

Furthermore, the biggest part of South Africa is "arid", at least by
by North American (especially Canadian) standards.  The Karoo (the largest
part of the largest province) is a semi-desert, and who farms there? - the
whites (and some whites want it to be a white homeland!).

The whole idea of homelands is in itself not bad - all over the world
various groups are asking (and some even fighting) for a homeland of their
own.  Forcing people to be associated with a homeland, and forcefully moving
them there, well that is another story.