Black people taste good

I love a nice meal of kaffir, freshly killed

Lion case highlights farm tensions

Aside from the lion factor, the trial shows an ugly side to South Africa

The conviction of two South Africans for throwing a black man into a lion enclosure is a reminder of the deep-rooted racial antagonisms that remain in South Africa's rural areas, BBC News's Justin Pearce reports from Johannesburg.

South Africa has just celebrated the 11th anniversary of democratic rule under a human rights-based constitution.

Yet on Thursday, a white man and his black employee were convicted for feeding a former black employee to lions.

Outsiders could be forgiven for wondering what happened to the "rainbow people" vision expressed by Archbishop Desmond Tutu at the end of the apartheid era.

In fact, what limited racial integration has happened in South Africa has been confined to the cities.

If anything, racial tensions in the countryside have increased since the end of white minority rule.

Slow change

Under apartheid, black people dispossessed of their land had little option but to work for white landowners who could hire and fire employees at will.

Police were at the service of the white farmers, helped by the "commandos", civil defence units manned by the farmers themselves.

The landowners also controlled access to housing, in a system that bore many of the characteristics of feudalism.

On the one hand, this system has been slow to change; on the other hand, those changes that have taken place have been regarded with deep suspicion by whites who are keenly aware of the large-scale expropriation of land from white farmers in Zimbabwe.

South African land reform legislation, allowing black people to reclaim land from which they or their ancestors were dispossessed, has added to white fears; at the same time, the slow implementation of these laws has deepened black frustration.

Violence

At the same time, attacks against white landowners have become more frequent.

This sounds familiar to me: Reconstruction, anyone?

posted by Steve @ 12:42:00 AM