South Africa: before and after on the expropriated farms

South Africa: before and after on the farms expropriated from whites

Two satellite images, one from 2009 and one from 2021, show the same South African landscape turned into something else. On the left, the green carpets of irrigated crops on the Dawn Valley and Ponderosa farms. On the right, wasteland. The comparison circulates as visual proof of what happens when productive land is expropriated to be redistributed: the countryside stops producing. The case is cited alongside Zimbabwe's, and the discussion drifts toward a pattern that repeats in Venezuela, Angola or Panama.

What the before-and-after photos show

The starting point is a comparative image: irrigated fields in 2009 against the same terrain in 2021. The contrast is the argument. Production disappears, the green fades and what was a commercial operation becomes land with no apparent use.

The discussion soon widens its focus. It is recalled that the neighboring country, Zimbabwe, already went down that road before, and the result is the same: redistributed land stops being cultivated. The comparison extends to Venezuela, where properties are expropriated, recoverable assets are sold off and what remains is abandoned. The pattern, they say, never fails.

There is a technical nuance worth noting. The image dates are in English format and South Africa is in the southern hemisphere: the 2009 photo is from October, the height of the southern spring, and the 2021 one is from July, the coldest winter. One participant points out that in the Google Earth history the same place can be seen in October 2021, three months later, looking quite different. The evidence is not as clean as it seems, though the underlying issue still stands.

The repeating pattern: Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Panama

The sequence is described the same way in several cases. First comes expropriation. Then the land is handed over to those who worked it. Then the usable parts are sold, the money is spent and the operation fades out. A familiar story sums it up: land reform takes the land away, the new owners harvest one crop, sell it, split the money and the working capital disappears. In the end they come back asking the former owners for jobs.

The Panama case is told in the first person. The citrus plantations and processing facilities in David, Chiriquí, were operating and gave jobs to hundreds of locals. When the Panamanian government clashed with the United States, it expropriated the properties and handed the plant over to the workers themselves to run as a cooperative. The result, according to this account, was the same: the facility stopped operating.

The Panama Canal appears as a second piece of evidence. Someone who visited it before and after the handover describes a negative difference: where there was once order, maintenance and money, there is now decay. The conclusion drawn is uncomfortable: many things can be said about Americans, but where they are there is investment and things work.

Farm murders and the figure being cited

The debate is not only economic. A report on farm attacks in South Africa in the second quarter of 2023 is shared: 76 attacks in the period, almost one a day, and a 167% increase in the number of murders between the first and second quarters. The figure is thrown out as context for a selective violence that, it is claimed, barely gets any media coverage.

The underlying complaint is about double standards. It is argued that racism against whites in those countries is intense and that the media do not cover it, or do so quietly, while any incident in the opposite direction makes front pages. It is a perception, not a fact, but it shapes much of the conversation.

The thread also looks inward. The question asked is who brought about the ruin of those efficient farmers. The answer suggested: the international boycott of the 1980s against apartheid, which included blocking trade in Krugerrands. The same mechanism being applied to other countries today. Now there is no boycott anymore, and the result is what the photos show.

The climate argument and the calendar's answer

The defense most often repeated outside these circles is climate change. Drought, extreme weather, lack of rain. In the discussion that argument is anticipated with sarcasm before it arrives, and answered with the calendar: if the two photos were taken in opposite seasons, the comparison loses force.

The counterargument is that seasonal difference does not explain three decades of abandonment. Land that produced in 2009 could have produced in 2021 with the same rain or without it, because irrigation does not depend only on the sky. What changed was not the climate, but who managed the water, the machines and the markets.

One underlying fact remains: 30 years after the end of apartheid, it is claimed that inequality has soared, that an elite linked to the new power has grown rich and that AIDS, hunger and misery have increased. The figures, it is said, are fascist and racist, but they do not lie.

What no one settles: whose fault it is

The thread reaches no agreement on the ultimate cause. Some stress the inability to manage what was expropriated. Others point to the international boycott that strangled the owners before they left. And a third group looks to the immediate future with a different concern: that the displaced will end up knocking on Europe's door.

The only point of agreement is that the experiment has been run before and the ending is known. Zimbabwe, Venezuela, Panama, Angola. The same script, the same wasteland. What remains unanswered is why it keeps being applied.