EASTERN Cape Agriculture MEC, Gugile Nkwinti has been reunited with a former comrade who saved him from the apartheid security police.
Nkwinti was overwhelmed when he came across former journalist Franz Kruger at a SADC journalist’s press conference held in Bhisho.
EASTERN Cape Agriculture MEC, Gugile Nkwinti has been reunited with a former comrade who saved him from the apartheid security police.
Nkwinti was overwhelmed when he came across former journalist Franz Kruger at a SADC journalist’s press conference held in Bhisho.
In 1987, Nkwinti was preparing to write his end-of-year exams in Grahamstown when he discovered the security branch was hunting him down. Kruger, then an editor of East Cape News Agency smuggled him out of Grahamstown. Nkwinti thanked Kruger for his help during the struggle. He regretted that he had not find time since 1994 to express his gratitude to him.
The two men embraced warmly – discarding for a while the press conference protocol – to recap on the old days of the liberation struggle. Kruger is now teaching at Wits, while Nkwinti has been recognized for having formulated the some of the best agriculture policies among developing countries.
Land redistribution on track
Nkwinti told the SADC journalists that the government has put plans in place to intensify the war against poverty during the next five years.He said Minister of Agriculture and Land Affairs, Lulu Xingwana, had announced a five-year land redistribution programme where R21-billion would be used to acquire 5-million hectares of land for redistribution to the landless people.
Such measures, he said, would prevent calamitous Zimbabwe situation occurring in South Africa.
