[R-P] También en Namibia dicen "Para vos, Señor Gatica!"

[Nestor Gorojovsky]

José María Gatica no aceptaba que cualquier pelafustán, so pretexto 
del cariño, le dijera "Mono", o "Monito".  Solía darle la respuesta 
que encabeza este correo.  Ese rasgo de dignidad personal lo rescató 
con sobrada elocuencia Leonardo Favio en su magnífica biografía 
fílmica del boxeador puntano, morocho y emblemático ícono popular de 
la Argentina peronista.

Estas cuestiones de dignidad personal suelen tener mucha más 
importancia que la que acostumbran concederle las clases acomodadas y 
dominantes.  Alguna vez Arturo Jauretche hacía notar, por ejemplo, la 
importancia que tenía para las mujeres humildes el estar casadas "con 
libreta", mientras que algunas mujeres de la oligarquía podían darse 
el lujo de tener una vida desprejuiciada.

A veces, de cosas parecidas se obtienen resultados inesperados.

En algún sitio de Namibia, hasta la Primera Guerra Mundial colonia 
alemana, y luego anglo-sudafricana hasta hace pocas décadas, una 
vieja granjera blanca de origen sudafricano o alemán tropezó con un 
pato aplastado entre dos tablones en el jardín de su quinta.  
Reprendió duramente a una empleada, quien a su vez la emprendió a los 
gritos con el hijo de la patrona.

No contó con el sindicato de trabajadores rurales y el hambre de 
tierras de los negros namibios.  Acaba de perder la chacra, y su hijo 
enfrenta ahora problemas legales.

Miles de campesinos, despojados de la tierra por la oligarquía 
namibia, están al acecho.  Cualquier chispa puede hacer arder el 
polvorín.  Ante estas perspectivas, hasta el New York Times acepta 
que las decisiones tomadas en Zimbabwe (donde, recientemente, el 
patriótico gobierno de Mugabe terminó con los terratenientes blancos) 
no han sido superadas por ningún otro país africano.

Un simple "Señor Gatica" puede desatar una revolución agraria.  
Difundo esto, más que nada, para ilustración de los amigos 
brasileños, a ver si les hacen llegar el dato a los del MST y a Lula 
mismo.

[Va sin traducción.  Lo esencial está arriba]

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[Marxism] Land redistribution in Namibia

    * To: marxism en lists.econ.utah.edu
    * Subject: [Marxism] Land redistribution in Namibia
    * From: Louis Proyect <lnp3 en panix.com>
    * Date: Sat, 25 Dec 2004 11:49:45 -0500
    * Reply-To: Activists and scholars in Marxist 
tradition<marxism en lists.econ.utah.edu>
    * Sender: marxism-bounces en lists.econ.utah.edu

NY Times, December 25, 2004
Tensions Simmer as Namibia Divides Its Farmland
By SHARON LaFRANIERE

ONGOMBO WEST FARM, Namibia - It started as a minor dispute between 
farm 
worker and farm owner, a bit of unpleasantness that might have been 
smoothed over with a few mild words. The 68-year-old owner, Hilde 
Wiese, 
discovered a gosling crushed between crates in the flower garden. She 

scolded the gardener for her carelessness. The worker, resentful, 
shouted 
at the owner's son, Andreas.

None of them could have guessed how their argument would play out. 
Fourteen 
months later, the Namibian government is expropriating the farm where 
the 
Wiese family has lived for four generations. The president has 
publicly 
declared Andreas Wiese a criminal. The farm workers union, which 
mobilized 
hundreds of protesters outside the Wieses' gate, has warned that a 
similar 
fate awaits other farmers who mistreat their workers.

That a seemingly routine dispute can suddenly explode into a showdown 

between the races underscores the fragility of white land holdings 
here - 
and the powder keg that long suppressed tensions over land in 
southern 
Africa threaten to become. Neighboring Zimbabwe, where the government 
has 
seized farms from thousands of white commercial farmers, has 
demonstrated 
how extreme measures can plunge a country into economic ruin, racial 
violence and widespread suffering.

Yet no other African nation has shown a better way than Zimbabwe's 
for 
resolving the blatant land disparities created by a century of 
colonialism 
and white minority rule. How Namibia manages its land conflict, now 
erupting on farms like the Wieses' after a decade of uneasy peace, 
has 
ramifications for the region.

In February, with the farm workers union threatening to invade 15 
farms, 
Namibia's leaders announced they would speed up a decade of 
agonizingly 
slow land reform by expropriating white-owned farms. Ten farms, 
including 
the Wiese farm, have been marked for expropriation so far. Unlike 
Zimbabwe, 
Namibia promises to compensate the owners, though it scarcely has the 
money.

The more assertive steps arise from a simple fact: although blacks in 

Namibia were promised in 1990 that independence would mean land 
redistribution on a grand scale, it has not. Blacks here have gained 
an 
average of just 1 percent of commercial farmland a year. In Namibia, 
an 
arid nation of 1.9 million people, roughly 4,000 white farmers still 
own 
roughly half of the usable farmland, while some 800,000 black farmers 
are 
jammed into the other half. The division reflects a century of labors 
first 
by Germany, then by white-ruled South Africa, to drive blacks into 
restricted areas and resettle their land with white farmers, most of 
them 
cattle ranchers.

Hifikepunye Pohamba, the Namibian lands minister who was elected last 
month 
as the nation's second president, says Namibia's stability rests in 
part 
upon changing that equation.

"For how long are we going to be able to convince these people not to 
take 
the law into their own hands?" he asked in an interview just before 
voters 
picked him to succeed the current president, Samuel Nujoma, next 
March. 
"The law is implemented by police, and the police we have are from 
disadvantaged groups. They are human. They also want to have the 
land. If 
you ask them to address the situation, they will not say no but they 
will 
not go.

"That is the situation I personally fear."

He has reason enough. The Namibian Farm Workers Union, which claims 
about 
4,000 members, is increasingly militant. Although the union has so 
far 
limited itself to protests and threats, its message to white farmers 
is 
ominous: those who refuse to rehire unjustly fired workers will face 
land 
invasions.

full: 
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/12/25/international/africa/25namibia.html


Louis Proyect
Marxism list: www.marxmail.org

Néstor Miguel Gorojovsky
nestorgoro en fibertel.com.ar

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"Sí, una sola debe ser la patria de los sudamericanos".
Simón Bolívar al gobierno secesionista y disgregador de 
Buenos Aires, 1822
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