South African president Jacob Zuma this week called for the confiscation of land owned by white people in his country — without any restitution made to the Caucasian property owners.Fortunately, doing so requires a 2/3 majority of their parliamentary body to change the existing laws. That majority may be hard to achieve.
In a speech given Friday morning, Zuma said the proposal would be the result of establishing a “pre-colonial land audit of land use and occupation patterns” that would determine what land needs to be taken.
His claim overlooks that many blacks who now live in South Africa are themselves immigrants or the children of immigrants from other parts of Africa. Their claim on the land is no greater, and perhaps less strong, than that of South African whites, many of whose families have been there for up to 10 generations.
