July 6, 2014

Black South Africans Get New Chance to Seek Redress for Stolen Land

President Zuma

Special to the Trice Edney News Wire from Global Information Network

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - South Africa will restart the claims process that provides compensation to black families who were illegally removed from their land during white rule. The window for those claims had been shut 16 years ago.

In a published statement, President Jacob Zuma assented to the Restitution of Land Rights Amendment Act, which among other things reopens the period to make a claim for those who missed the previous deadline of Dec. 31, 1998.

The original Restitution act, passed by Nelson Mandela, set up a Land Claims Commission and a Land Claims Court to buy or expropriate land and return it to the claimants. The Act was strongly opposed by the right-wing Freedom Front, the Inkatha Freedom Party and the South African Agricultural Union.

The process will run for five years starting from June 30, 2014, the statement said.

There are an estimated 397,000 valid restitution claims for apartheid-era forced removals. Only about 80,000 claims were filed by the 1998 deadline, although 3.5 million people had been forcibly evicted from their land or otherwise shifted to the homelands during the apartheid era; and about 4 million people had lost land under “betterment” schemes.

The amendment bill would also allow for claims by the Khoi and San people who were evicted even before the 1913 Native Land Act. The amendments extend the window period for lodging claims to June 18, 2018.

In an editorial by Tshepo Diale, a banker, in the Independent On Line (iol.co.za) Business Report, Diale wrote: “The commitment to return land to rightful owners as enshrined in the constitution should outweigh any other factor. The establishment of the office of the valuer-general, whose role will be to evaluate land and farms, will offer a much-needed reprieve in lengthy negotiations over price.

“Returning land to rightful owners is not enough to address poverty. The restoration of dignity through ownership alone, when the land is not productive, yields nothing.

“Pockets of success have begun to emerge as the government moves to recapitalize and assist in the development of farms left fallow. However, these lessons will have to be implemented at lightning speed for the true fruits of the land to be realized by the new owners.

“If we have no land to live on, we can be no people.”

The restitution act follows a new proposal by the Land Affairs Ministry which would give farmworkers 50 percent of land on which they are employed. The “historical owner” of the farm “automatically retains” the other half. The government will compensate the “historical owner” for the share given to workers.

Opposition to the policy came quickly from white farm owners at the AfriBusiness Property Rights Conference in Pretoria who this month launched a campaign with the goal of defeating the government program. It was called “ill-considered by Agri SA, one of the largest farmers’ unions.

But the Lands minister hit back saying: "We have been bending over backwards as black people, particularly African people... It is time that all of us took responsibility for progress... for South Africa belongs to all who live in it, black and white".

July 6, 2014

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - In the “afterglow” of the Fourth of You Lie, I am flipping through an African-American magazine, enjoying the content, but looking for the “bite”.  For how can you not bite when you look at the space in which African-American people occupy?  Our middle class is growing, but fragile.  The level of poverty among African-Americans has hardly changed in the past decade.  Unemployment rates for African- Americans remain high, despite talk of economic “recovery”.  But too many of our organization have little bark, and even less bite.

Have we been co-opted by the organizations that support us, the advertisers that fund our organizations, efforts, and magazines?  To some extent, advertisers and others are working in their own best interest, targeting people who will purchase their products.  From hair products to banks, it makes sense for organizations to reach out to the African American community.  At the same time, is there a price we pay for patronage?

I am stepping into shaky ground when I raise this point.  My own organization, Economic Education, seeks contracts and grants to support efforts to engage in financial and economic literacy.  Banks will be among my likely supporters.  Will that muzzle me?

Can you accept money from banking institutions while criticizing redlining and the financial abuse of African-Americans?  Will organizations shy away from you when you simply tell the truth?  Will support be withdrawn, either openly or subtly?  Is there a space where African American leaders can speak without restraint?

I remember, years ago, speaking at a technology organization’s conference and earning a collective gasp of horror when I spoke about the absence of African-Americans in senior positions.  After the speech and reception, the sister who had organized the event asked to speak with me privately.  “Everything you said was correct", she said.  “But this was not the place to say it.”  She went on to share that she had suggested that I do a series of talks for the organization, and that while she could not rescind her own proposal, she would be tepid.

That’s just my experience, but I wonder how many others have cut and pasted their views to seek corporate support? The Los Angeles chapter of the NAACP, for example, was all set to give Donald Sterling a second lifetime achievement award because he’d donated a few dollars (reports range from $45,000 to $100,000) to the organization.  After Sterling’s racist comments were blasted, the offer of the achievement award was rescinded.  The controversy surrounding the potential award caused the Los Angeles leader of the NAACP, Leon Jenkins, to resign.  There was no outcry when Sterling got the first award, although he was a well-known racist slumlord.

Is a slumlord’s support worth an NAACP lifetime achievement award?   Are some our organizations trading cash for honors and publicity?  Or are we getting our earned sponsorships in exchange for our patronage?  It is something to think about especially in light of the Koch Foundation’s recent support of the United Negro College Fund (UNCF).  While many in the HBCU universe are grateful for the contribution, others are repelled by it, to the point of declining the direct contribution to their schools.

When I was President of the National Association of Negro Business and Professional Women’s Clubs (NANBPW), I was introduced to a corporate sponsor by one of my board members.  Beforehand, I was asked to “tone it down” for fear that my abrasive style might turn the sponsor off.  I sat for tea and bit my tongue so many times that I thought I’d find its tip floating in my tea. The result?  A generous sponsorship and a hot, cleansing shower for me.

I am raising this question chafing at the paucity of independent and critical black voices, understanding that too many are muted by the corporate support they receive.  If voices are not muted, then the concern about support and challenging positions are certainly discussed behind closed doors.  And the result?  “We have to look into this matter”.  “We need to study this a bit more”.  In other words, we need to check with the folks who support us to make sure this is okay.

Without disparaging those organizations or individuals that depend on corporate support, I wonder if there is a way for progressive African Americans to support our own organization, free and unfettered, with no fear of implicit or explicit censorship.  Dr. Ron Daniels and the Institute for the Black World does some of this work, but they struggle for lack of financial support, relying on a few volunteers and underpaid friends who maintain the organization.

Julianne Malveaux is an economist an author based in Washington, DC

July 6, 2014

Shopping While Black: Talbots CEO Apologizes to Detroit City Lawyer

June 30, 2014

How the World Has Changed Since I Ran for President
By Rev. Jesse L. Jackson, Sr.

(TriceEdneyWire.com) - This year marks the thirtieth anniversary of my 1984 campaign for the presidency. Last Saturday at the kickoff of the annual Rainbow Push Convention, Rep. Maxine Waters led a panel exploring the effects of that campaign — registering over a million new voters, helping Democrats take back the Senate in 1986, lifting up new leaders from New York City’s David Dinkins to Minnesota’s future Senator Paul Wellstone.

But looking in a rear view mirror can tell you where you’ve been, but not where you are going. What strikes me about the 1984 campaign are not the accomplishments of the past, but the implications for the future. In 1984, we argued that the Democratic Party had to reach out to African Americans, Latinos, anti-war progressives, small farmers, the emerging gay and lesbian community — the locked out and left out, a Rainbow Coalition that could help change the country. Now as Barack Obama’s historic election in 2008 and re-election in 2012 showed, that Rainbow Coalition is the new majority. People of color, single women, millennials — the so-called “Rising American Electorate” — fueled Obama’s victories.

They turned out in large numbers in 2008 and 2012 and Democrats won. They stayed home in 2010 and Republicans took the majority in the House and gained governors and in state legislatures. The fundamental question in 2014 and 2016 is whether this coalition is inspired to register and vote, or whether it is discouraged and disaffected and doesn’t show up. The 1984 campaign was also a challenge to the constricted agenda of both parties. Ronald Reagan had launched the conservative era in 1980.

He cut taxes on the rich, doubled the military budget in peacetime, unleashed a fierce attack on unions, slashed spending on housing and the poor, and launched a New Cold War, featuring covert wars from Nicaragua to Angola and a new nuclear arms race. Too many Democrats cowered before his charge. They embraced tax cuts and deregulation, went AWOL in the attack on labor, competed to show that they too were muscular abroad. Reagan and Thatcher argued that there were no alternatives.

We challenged that myth at home and abroad. At that time, the U.S. saw apartheid South Africa as a strategic ally and labeled Nelson Mandela a terrorist. We said South Africa was a terrorist state and demanded that Nelson Mandela be released from prison. We won. At that time, the U.S. refused to talk with the Palestinians. We argued that the only solution in the Middle East was mutual recognition and mutual security. That now is considered common sense. We opposed first the use of nuclear weapons and wasting billions on weapons that we did not need and could not use. And we were right. We argued that America’s economy grew best from the bottom up, when the rewards of growth were widely shared.

We pushed to empower workers, not crush unions, to protect worker rights in trade deals, not just investor rights. We called for providing public pension funds with guarantees to invest in an Infrastructure Bank that would rebuild America and put people to work. We pushed for investment in education and for single payer health care that would provide greater opportunity and basic security for working families. Today, once more our national agenda is too limited. The economy works only for the few, while most Americans struggle to stay afloat. Vital public investments in everything from schools to affordable college, bridges and mass transit are starved for funds.

The rules have been rigged so that billionaires pay lower tax rates than their secretaries and multinationals lower rates than small businesses. Obama is accused of withdrawing from the world, even as the U.S. maintains over 700 bases across the world, and targets drone attacks in nearly a dozen nations. This limited debate must be challenged. If it is challenged, as our campaign in 1984 showed, new energy will be unleashed, the new majority can be mobilized. If there is no challenge, then too many will lose hope — and will stay home. Thirty years later, there are new, sophisticated techniques and far greater floods of money in politics. But the lessons of 1984 still hold. The country needs change. A majority can be forged for that change, but only if they are given a reason to get engaged.