South Africa still has one of the highest murder rates in the world with 31 murders per 100000 people in 2012 – five times the global average of 6.2 per 100000, according to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime’s latest report, released yesterday.
Crime statistics released by Minister of Police Nathi Mthethwa in September showed that murder increased by 650 cases, to 16259, a 4.2% increase from 2012.
An AFP report this week puts South Africa’s murder rate at 31.3 per 100000 people, a 2.8% increase from 2012.
Nevertheless, the UN report hailed South Africa’s “encouraging trend” in halving the murder rate from 64.5 per 100 000 in 1995 to 31 in 2012.
But Institute for Security Studies senior researcher Gareth Newham says this country could reduce the murder rate to 2.1 per 100 000.
“Reduction of the murder rate relies on the police, but what we need is a plan that involves more social workers, education and role-modelling because most people [in this country] are killed by people known to them,” Newham said.
The UN reported that over half of all murder victims were under 30, with children under 15 accounting for just over 8% of all murder victims, at 36 000.
The UN report notes that though most men globally are killed by someone they did not know, almost half of the female victims were killed by someone close to them.
About 80% of murder victims and 95% of perpetrators were men, with 15% of all murders stemming from domestic violence (63 600).
Almost 70% of all domestic violence fatalities in South Africa are women (43 600).
“Home can be the most dangerous place for a woman,” said Jean-Luc Lemahieu, the UN’s director for policy analysis and public affairs
The UN names Honduras as the world’s most murderous country, with 90.4 murders per 100000. The US overtook Africa as the region with the most murders because of a surge in drugs-funded organised crime.
The report ignored the scourge of farm murders on whites, much higher still than the current murder rate.
In a joint operation between Richmond SAPS, Crime Intelligence, K9 Unit, HAWKS and Magma Security and Investigations three black suspects were arrested for the murder of three members of a Richmond family.
The suspects were arrested at 04:00 this morning in the Soetwater and Elandskop area. Police recovered three firearms as well as cellphones belonging to the deceased. The three suspects are between 19 and 20 years of age.
The German couple, Eckard (76) and Elizabeth Schutte and their son Lutz (33) were so badly mutilated that the police could not initially say how they had been murdered.
The horrific triple-murder of the German couple and their son was accompanied by gruesome violence which included them being torched.
Mr. Schutte’s neck and chest was carved open, Mrs. Schutte’s head was crushed with a heavy object and all three had been set alight. The victims also had stabwounds. The murders were clearly racial hate-crimes.
One of the suspects is an employee of the deceased. The motive for the murder was “robbery” the police said.
On Sunday 2 March the bodies of were discovered on Springfield Farm in Richmond by a family member who had come to visit them.
A neighbour of the deceased said the son Lutz had just arrived in South Africa from Germany to surprise his father for his 77th birthday.
His mother had fetched him at the airport on the weekend. The murderers were already in the house when they arrived, awaiting them. Mr. Schutte had presumably already been murdered by that time.
Their corpses were discovered shortly after twelve on the same day when another son, Stefan, had arrived at the farm for the birthday party.
There was no forced entry into the premises. The family’s vehicle, firearms and cellphones were taken by the suspects. The vehicle which is alleged to have been burnt in an isolated area could not be recovered due the inclement weather and terrain.
KwaZulu-Natal Provincial Commissioner, Lieutenant General Mmamonnye Ngobeni congratulated all role-players for the breakthrough. “Although we are saddened by the brutal attack and unnecessary loss of life we are glad that those responsible for this barbaric act of violence are behind bars where they belong,” she said.
She did not elaborate on the role the private security company played in the arrest.
This week has seen at least five farm attacks on white farmers in South Africa.
In the latest incident, a farmer and his wife were attacked by two armed men on their farm outside Barkly-East.
The white farmer, Sarel Pretorius from the farm Rooipoort, was shot dead. His wife was locked in the bathroom.
Farm watch groups were mobilised to find the attackers, who had fled in the direction of Elliot.
The attackers stole a white Toyota Hilux bakkie and firearms.
The community of Barkly East is still traumatised by the brutal murder of David (87) and Rallie de Villiers (86) in October of 2013.
The other four farm attacks are as follows:
11 January – Bloemspruit. Dr Jacob Swart and his wife Elise were attacked on their farm with knives and steel pipes by two men. The attackers fled with a .22 revolver, a rifle, two cell phones and an undisclosed amount of cash.
12 January – Wallmansthal area. An R5 attack rifle, allegedly issued only to the SAPS, was used in an attack on two victims in their sixties. The farmer was wounded and electrical appliances were stolen.
14 January – Waterval area near Pretoria. The farmer was lured outside and attacked with a machete.
14 January – Wallmansthal area. A farmer was held hostage and attacked.
“Every action has an equal but opposite reaction” – Sir Isaac Newton
In life, actions (physical or otherwise) also have reactions. Somehow, an unknown number of actions, reactions and re-reactions got us to where we are today, causing this RedOctober march, the allegations of white genocide and outrage over farm murders. A large section of social media describes these activists and supporters as racists, without questioning how we got to this point. I’ll attempt to apply Stephen Covey’s 5th Habit of Highly Successful People, “Seek first to understand, then to be understood”, so doing some research before shouting insults and proclaiming these people to be racists.
Crime
I’ve written numerous articles about crime on this country, so I’ve done a lot of research. Hopefully all the readers will know that we are the crime capital of the world. If you need reminding, here’s our wall of shame, 1994 to 2012:
376,627 reported murders (57 per day)
597,900 reported homicides (91 per day)
443,551 reported attempted murders (67 per day)
4,175,178 reported serious assaults (635 per day)
1,111,425 reported rapes (169 per day)
22,228,500 estimated rapes (3,383 per day)
Our crime is at crisis levels, no doubt, and with these high levels it’s impossible that every region, race, sex, group, religion etc is not affected.
Hate crime vs normal crime
It seems that a large number of RedOctober detractors are using the “crime affects all” reasoning for shooting down RedOctober. With the extreme levels of crime in our country it would be easy for hate crime to be hidden in the enormous sea of crime that taking place. Taking this “crime affects us all” approach would mean denying the existence of hate crime, which is absurd. Besides the fact that hate crime is difficult to identify, quantify and prove there is an obvious difference between hate crime and normal crime. The latter lacks the element of hatred by the perpetrator(s) towards the victim(s) and the level of violence is often exaggerated. I never really thought about how the psychological effects would vary, so I did some research. According to research, hate crimes have more serious psychological effects than other crime. Also, survivors of hate crime show more signs of psychological distress than survivors of non-biased crime and this distress was found to last longer in hate crime survivors due to the fact that the crime leaves lasting feelings of personal danger and vulnerability associated with their identity. A high level of outrage would thus make sense, as members of the victim’s group would feel this same personal danger and vulnerability that the victim felt.
So we’ve seen outrage by Afrikaner groups over social media, we’ve seen the RedOctober march taking place, all against farm murders in particular. While these Afrikaners may speak a different language to us, be a different colour to the majority of the country, have different interests and cultures, they are not immune to the same feelings of vulnerability and persecution that all other groups affected by hate crimes feel. In other words, they are also human. The next big question would then be: Are these feelings of vulnerability and persecution, which is causing their reaction of outrage, justified or merely perceived?
These activists present a long list (thousands) of victims murdered on their farms in interracial murders, and they claim that the murder rate on farms is far higher than the national average. Now without going into the actual numbers, because I feel they are irrelevant for purposes of this discussion, I’d like to make a few points:
A number like this can create a perception
The aggravating circumstances surrounding these attacks strengthens the perception
However, proving hate crime on an individual basis is near impossible, as will be further discussed in the next paragraph, which can strengthen critics’ claims that the perception is false
Proving and prosecuting hate crime
South Africa is set to bring into law the Hate Crimes Bill in 2014. Long overdue to say the least, the Bill is set to address how hate crime is tried and prosecuted. What may be a first for our country is old news for many first world countries like the USA, which has several hate crimes statutes. But even with all their legislation, they have serious challenges in proving that a crime is hate crime, especially proving racial motives. The (US) Journal of Criminal Law and Criminology contains a discussion as to why this difficulty exists, and these same reasons are relevant in our context.
“The fact that an individual’s motive lies peculiarly within his or her knowledge undermines the ability of prosecutors and plaintiffs to prove racist motives in hate crimes cases”
So without the accused’s own admission, it is virtually impossible to prove hate crime. Prosecutors will have to rely on circumstantial evidence. Other difficulties in proving motive are:
“Inferences about motive which are drawn from circumstantial evidence may be highly inaccurate given the inherent ambiguity of motive itself” – The defendant may have acted out of paranoia rather than racism
“Multiple motives may impel an individual to act” – The defendant may claim that he or she acted out of some other motivation
To sum up the document: “Prosecutors often find it impossible to demonstrate by proof beyond a reasonable doubt that the accused acted out of racist motives”. These are the exact same problems that RedOctober activists like Steve Hofmeyr face when pushing their cause, and the exact same problem our courts will face when the Hate Crimes Bill comes into force.
There are cases that pop up which are undoubtedly hate crime such as the Rawstorne family murder by William Kekana, who testified that he brutally wiped out the family “because they were white”, or the Lotter women murders where the perpetrators left behind their motive, “Kill the Boer” daubed in the victims’ blood. These cases further strengthen the perception that many other farm murders have a racial motive behind them but these cases are generally ignored by critics. Activists thus have an uphill battle to prove hate crime when motive is so difficult to prove for the vast majority of cases. But although the motives behind hate crime are almost impossible to prove in court, it is very successfully proven outside of court.
The media and social media commentators (SMC’s)
In most cases of interracial violence and cases involving violence against minorities, the media and SMC’s are quick to attach a motive to the crime, classifying the crime as a hate crime. These accusations are deemed to be true by consumers as if the motive was actually proven in a court of law. Also, the media and SMC’s tend to be very inconsistent when classifying crimes as hate crimes, creating the impression amongst some that they are biased or trying to censor. To give an example:
A recent case of a horrific rape and murder of a lesbian. The media and SMC’s immediately classified the crime as a corrective rape hate crime, although no anti-gay motive was obtained from the perpetrator. The motive was assumed because the victim was lesbian and due to the aggravating circumstances.
A recent case of a brutal torture and murder of an elderly farm couple. Although this was an interracial crime and aggravating circumstances existed, the media and SMC’s declined to attach a racial motive to the crime.
When the latter is called a “racist farm murder” or “white genocide”, critics are quick to claim “crime affects all”, “we have a high murder rate so obviously these farmers will be murdered” and “farmers are more vulnerable because they are isolated” etc. Then why is it that when a lesbian is raped it’s called “corrective rape”? Doesn’t “crime affect us all”? When we have over 3000 rapes per day isn’t it obvious that lesbians will also be victims of rape? Are lesbians not vulnerable because men are usually more powerful and often hunt their victims in packs? Yet both cases are not treated the same.
Pure double standards in my book and most probably one of the reasons why the likes of Steve Hofmeyr go to extreme lengths to protest and create awareness regarding farm murders and white genocide.
White genocide
Just to touch on the main misconceptions about genocide:
Numbers don’t matter. According to the definition of genocide, “an individual criminal may be guilty of genocide even if he kills only one person, so long as he knew he was participating in a larger plan to destroy the group [or part of a group]”.
It only takes ONE individual to kill ONE person, if that individual knew he was participating in a larger plan to destroy the people. That means that if only ONE individual interprets a statement like “Shoot the Boer” by his commander and chief for instance, to be an order to commit genocide and acts on it, that individual will be guilty of committing genocide, plain and simple.
There are indicators that genocide could be happening on a larger scale, for example, widespread rape, torture and executions of Afrikaners on their farms, with perpetrators stealing few or no valuables. However the existence of an organised plan to commit genocide is unknown and will be extremely difficult to prove. Regardless, individuals can be perpetrators of genocide by definition. In the two cases I mentioned before, the Rawstorne family and the Lotters, it can easily be debated that these are cases of genocide. After a healthy debate, you will at best prove that these cases are racist hate crimes, which I’m afraid is not much worse than genocide.
Conclusion
There are a high number of Afrikaners being murdered on their farms. Often there is rape and torture involved and in many cases nothing is stolen. There are numerous death threats posted on Facebook, Twitter and even at political rallies, mostly directed at this group. On top of this, there are cases where the racist motive cannot be denied. Although few of these cases exist, they further strengthen the perception that farm murders in general are racially motivated and that white genocide may exist. There is clear evidence for the Afrikaner minority group to feel vulnerable and threatened and it appears that their fears and outrage of unjustly treated by the media, social media commentators and even the government. Besides the compelling evidence in their favour, even their human nature is criticised and they are persecuted for this.
At least nine brutal killings by black attackers were recorded in South Africa’s press over the course of the month
Over the month of October South Africa has been hit by a series of farm murders, with at least nine such killings being reported in the South African press. The victims of such murders were often elderly and almost always in the power of their young attackers when they were killed, often with extreme brutality.
The South African Police Service no longer releases statistics on farm attacks and farm murders. However, according to the records compiled by TAU SA from press articles and its own reporting networks there were twelve murders on farms and small holdings in the month of October. This is up from the two farm murders recorded in September and it is also the highest monthly total this year. 56 farm murders have been recorded by TAU SA up until the end of October 2013, as compared to 54 during the whole of 2012 and 55 in 2011.
KwaZulu Natal has been particularly hard hit by farm murders this year. KwaNalu, the KwaZulu-Natal Agricultural Union, has recorded 9 farm murders in the province so far this year, up from 4 in 2012 and one in 2011.
Among the farm murders reported in the press over October are the following:
On Thursday, October 3, four armed men overpowered Paul Mason, 63, and his wife Gwyneth on their return to the farm Kruisfrontein near Sabie, Mpumalanga. Gwyneth was tied up in the house. Paul Mason was taken outside and shot three times.
At midday on Wednesday, October 9, Mrs Hennie van der Schyff, 73, was murdered on the farm Môrester near Klerksdorp in the North West province. The police could not initially say with certainty whether she had been shot as well assaulted, so severe were her head injuries. Her husband, Frans van der Schyff, 76, also was severely beaten around the head and later died of his wounds in hospital.
On the night of October 9 Eugene van der Merwe, 61, and his son Siyanda Ndlovu, 13, were attacked on Sunnyside farm in the Ixopo area, KwaZulu Natal. Van der Merwe, who was attacked in the shed, was severely beaten with a blunt object around the head and died on the scene. His son Siyanda was attacked in the house and also incurred severe injuries, but survived. Thulani Chemane, 36, and Busani Shoba, 27, were arrested in connection with the murder.
On the night of Thursday October 10 Gert de Beer, 82, and his wife, Lina, were attacked on their farm in the White river area. Gert de Beer was apparently tortured in order to force him to hand over the keys to the safe. He was then beaten to death with a hammer. His wife, Lina, who is blind and deaf was chopped in the hand with a panga during the attack. A 20 and 23 year old were arrested in connection with the murder.
On the early morning of October 16 David de Villiers, 87, and his wife Ralie, were attacked and stabbed to death on their farm Broadlands, Barkly East in the Eastern Cape. Their son, David, Dawie, was also stabbed repeatedly, but survived. Thulani Khetane, 22, was arrested in connection with the murder.
On Thursday evening October 17 Dan Knight, 56, of Outlook farm in the Himeville area of KwaZulu-Natal and his partner Beth Bucher were attacked in their home by a gang of five men. Knight was beaten to death with hammers while Buchner was forced to watch. Tsepiso Sthembiso Ramanyane, 20, Bonginkosi Eric Nyawose, 33, and Thabo Dlamini, 22, were arrested on charges relating to the murder.
On Tuesday October 22 Willem Weites, 78, of the Welkom farm in Ngome area of KwaZulu-Natal was in his milk stall when a gang of three men entered and held a knife at the throat of his daughter Everlien asked where her father was. When Mr Weites came to the aid of his daughter he was fatally shot three times. According to a report in the Witness, citing Weites’ son Frederik, Everlien was then dragged “to the main house while threatening to rape her. They had found his mother and demanded keys to the safe. They tied up both women, took an undisclosed sum of money and drove off in his father’s bakkie… Another attacker tied up farm workers and took their cellphones.” – politicsweb.co.za
A crowd of 350 farmers, farmworkers and others from the rural community protested outside the Himeville Magistrate’s Court on Tuesday, as three men appeared for the grisly murder of timber contractor Daniel Knight last week.
The protest was held just a day after another KwaZulu-Natal farmer was murdered on his Vryheid dairy farm, The Witness reported.
Willem Weites, 78, was killed while trying to rescue his daughter, who was being held at knife-point
His son, Frederik Weites, 50, said a white car came to the dairy store with men carrying a bucket as people often do when they come to buy milk.
Weites said the three black men got out of the car and grabbed his sister Everlien, 49, after asking where her father was.
“They held a knife to her neck and when my father tried to intervene, they just shot him in the head and chest and he died on the spot,” he said.
He said they then dragged his sister to the main house threatening to rape her. They thus forced his mother to hand over keys to the safe.
They tied up both women, took an undisclosed sum of money and drove off in his father’s bakkie, he said.
Another attacker tied up farm workers and took their cellphones.
The bakkie was later recovered about eight kilometres away as in most farm attacks.
“We are devastated. I mean why do you need to kill people for money when you can take the money and leave them alive?” Frederik asked. Weites had often helped local blacks grind their maize at his mill.
Police spokesperson Captain Thulani Zwane said Ngome SAPS were investigating charges of murder and “business robbery”. No arrests had been made, he said.
In Himeville, Tsepiso Sthembiso Ramanyane, 20, Bonginkosi Eric Nyawose, 33, both from Bulwer, and Thabo Dlamini, 22, from Himeville, appeared for the murder of Knight and robbery with aggravating circumstances for taking property of Knight’s valued at R651 000.
While white farmers fear the escalating farm attacks, black workers fear that 300 households who had family members working for Knight may be hit by job losses following his murder.
Knight’s murder was particularly brutal. He was struck on the head with a heavy hammer while his partner, her eyelids forced open, was made to watch.
Graham Acutt, a dairy farmer, said: “This affects the community more than it affects the farmers; more families in the community will lose jobs because of some individuals that want quick cash. This picketing shows everyone that we are sick and tired of criminals that attack us.”
Sue Acutt asked: “Why did they want her to watch them doing this? Later, they even tried to suffocate her using a plastic glove as they covered her face with it. They left her thinking she had also died after she passed out.”
Vice-chairperson of the Vryheid Agricultural Chamber Horst Hellberg, referring to Weites’ death, said it was with shock “that we had to hear of another farm murder, this time one of our senior farmers”.
“It is unacceptable that farm murders are getting out of control again and government is not treating it as a priority.”
He suggested the government would address these issues more seriously only once there was not enough food to put on the nation’s tables.
KwaZulu-Natal Agricultural Union (KwaNalu) security desk Koos Marais said they were disturbed by the latest callous murder.
Dr Johan Burger of the South African Institute for Security Studies said in 2012, 63 farm murders were recorded. This year up to September there had been 54 farm murders recorded already.
“The brutality with which these murders are carried out makes us believe that there is something behind these attacks,” he said.
He said it was interesting to note that last year 39 farmers were killed and of those only three were black farmers.
I went on my first protest march yesterday – another item checked on the ‘things everyone should do before they die’ list. I attended the Red October march. According to the media reports on the march I must have turned into a right wing, fascist, Nazi, apartheid supporting crazy since I moved here. That’s not true. I was brought up in London, one of the most diverse cities on the face of the planet and I marvel at the fantastic range of cultures that this earth plays host to. Anyone who knows me knows that I don’t give a flying monkeys whether you are white, black or green with sky blue polka dots – AND THAT HAS NOT CHANGED.
I also don’t recognise the caricature of the protest that was presented by the media – maybe I’m mistaken and I turned up at a different protest….
I have to say, I was hesitant at turning up yesterday. I was worried that this event would be hijacked by racist groups looking for a publicity opportunity. I was worried that the message of Red October would be kidnapped.
I was pleasantly surprised by what I experienced; the protesters in Pretoria were respectful but wanted to get their point heard. I, personally, heard no bigoted racism, no derogatory name calling or incitement to violence. I saw people who were sick and tired of the fear that crime causes in this country – people who were saying enough is enough. I identified with the Red October cause after reading the content of the letter sent to the Presidency setting out the reasons for the protest:
Urgent attention to the lack of security on South African farms and the lack of attention to farm murders in general
Urgent attention to the continuing violence against women
Urgent attention to police action regarding murder and crimes committed against the people of South Africa by foreigners streaming across our borders
Urgent attention to the lack of quality education for all our children, respecting their culture, language, religion and heritage
Urgent attention to the lack of service delivery, the preservation of our natural water resources and the lack of control over the theft of electricity
Urgent attention to the legal processes and lack of justice with regard to the detaining of prisoners without proper due course
Urgent attention to expedient trials and harsher sentences of criminals found guilty of violent crime, i.e. murder and rape
Nothing racist in that lot – no calls for return to apartheid, no we’re better than you, no bigoted name calling, no incitement to violence, no mention that this should be limited to white people in any way, shape or form!
But when the protest was reported in the media it was characterised as a bunch of Afrikaners demanding special treatment over anyone else, making outlandish, untrue statements and generally being a bit racist. It was an eye opening experience of selective reporting and has taught me the lesson that the ‘news’ is actually about 99% opinion and spin and the remaining space left to fact is filled by cherry-picked information to back up the preconceptions of the person and/or agency presenting the story.
So, let’s answer the criticisms leveled at Red October.
In 2009 white people represented 1.8% of murder victims, but make up 8% of the population.
By this statement E news is trying to indicate that white people, especially Afrikaners, are not victimized and are, in fact, nice and safe and complaining about nothing. Anyone fearing ‘white genocide’ is clearly a delusional fantasist.
Up until this point, any figures quoted by groups worried about the degree of violence focused on white populations were discredited as the South African Police Service does not routinely collect data on the ethnicity of victims and perpetrators of murder. Obviously that doesn’t make nice convincing TV news, so E has gone through the archives until they found a 4 year old statistic gathering dust in a corner. Want to disprove groups who spend an awful lot of effort trying to document murder rates through the devotion of their time to collating anecdotal reporting? Then where is your carefully researched analysis of murder over the past 19 years? Where is your statistical analysis of last year’s crime statistics that were released last month? Where is your evidence of the reliability of your single snapshot statistic from 2009?
So, let’s leave statistics aside – as Benjamin Disraeli reportedly said: “There are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and statistics.”
What is verifiable is the horrific brutality and savagery of farm murders in South Africa; if you have a strong stomach, Google it. Torture, rape, murder and mutilation are a legitimate and reasonable part of robbery or a wage dispute? I didn’t think so.
This march is ridiculous as it only focusses on crime against white people
I refer you back to the motivation for the protest above. This was against all crime, all murder, all rape, all violent attacks. No one in this country should have to live in fear. Yes, the focus shifted towards white victims of brutal farm attacks, but these were the people who could be bothered to get off their backsides and make a stand.
If all those who criticised the march on that basis stood up and arranged a protest against the complete lack of control that the ANC government has over crime in this country, then we’d attend that one too. But you haven’t, so we can’t.
The additional demand to scrap racial quotas such as Affirmative Action, Black Economic Empowerment, etc, etc, proves that Red October is a front for racists who wish to return to apartheid.
It has escaped reporting, but organisers and speakers took great pains to point out that this is by no means a call to return to apartheid and that the system was fundamentally wrong.
All forms of discrimination are fundamentally wrong. None of them are positive. The ANC, however, insist on applying racial quotas and conditions on all areas of commerce and employment. How will it ever be fair that someone has to hand over large percentages of the business that they have worked hard to establish and make successful, just due to their skin colour?
The motivation for this protest also highlights the issue of education, asking for quality education for ALL children in this country. The ANC has had 19 years to focus on education, ensuring that every person can compete for jobs based on their abilities and qualifications rather than the melanin content of their skin. They have failed spectacularly – the government can’t even get textbooks into schools for the start of the school year! In order to cover for their incompetence and lack of motivation in this area, they impose employment quotas to give a thin veneer of success.
In the face of a difficult and hostile job market, many white families have had to rely on their entrepreneurial abilities to make a living. If you can’t get a job, you have to work for yourself in order to survive. The new focus of the government has now been to attack white ownership of business, to demand that anyone who has worked hard to establish a successful, profitable company now hands over a percentage of what they built up to black ownership.
There is one group determined to keep race a flashpoint in South Africa and that is the ANC. The ANC are just as obsessed with race as apartheid was, possibly more so.
As the title of this piece indicated, this experience has been a real eye opener. Caricatures mindlessly spouted by the media are being used unfairly to silence people’s concerns. I guess there are none so blind as those that refuse to see, and deaf as those that refuse to hear.
It is a dark day for the country when its National Commissioner claims that crime is under control, while the murder rate has risen to 16,259 cases per year. This means that almost two murders a day more occurred to bring the total number of murders committed daily to almost 45!
Farm murders shows an even more alarming picture. In the same period farm murders increased by 34% to 68 in 2012/2013 compared to the 50 murders in 2011/2012. Farm attacks increased from 112 cases to 176 cases. Farm attacks in fact are violent crimes against people and not on property. Therefor it can be assumed that many of these attacks are nothing less than attempted murder, which were successfully averted.
“What is even more disturbing is the apparent ignorance of the police in this regard. On the police`s official website the page titled ‘Farm Attacks` under `Crime Prevention` has been ‘under construction’ for months now, leaving the impression that the police do not regard this category of crime as a seriousness matter,” said Mr Henry Geldenhuys, Deputy President of TAU SA and Chairman of the Safety and Security Committee. “Because the police stubbornly refuse to list farm murders as a separate crime category in their statistics, they are not even aware of this alarming increase in farm attacks. Furthermore it has to be borne in mind that TAU SA`s database on farm attacks and farm murders is probably incomplete because it relies on the feedback of members or on media reports which are then verified. Therefore the true picture could be worse,” says Mr Geldenhuys.
Since April 1 this year to date TAU SA`s database lists 37 murders and 110 farm attacks. If this trend was to continue until the end of the current year 74 murders and 220 attacks could be expected, which will represent a further increase of 24%.
“The fact that the National Commissioner considers crime to be under control indicates that farmers should not expect any increased police interest in their problems, and therefore should continue their need to ensure that they are versed in self defence and the upgrading of their physical safety- and security measures,” said Mr Geldenhuys.
The Nelspruit Circuit Court found Aaron Majawodwa Nkosi, 30, guilty on Tuesday of killing white Mpumalanga farmer Johannes Hendrik Tolstoi Schoeman.
A Sapa correspondent reported that Nkosi’s co-accused Thomas Johannes Nyathi, 30, was acquitted.
The two black men were accused of robbing and kidnapping Gudryn Schoeman, 67, and murdering her 86-year-old husband at Vygeboom Farm, near Badplaas, on the night of December 17, 2010.
Judge Mmonoa Teffo said Nkosi incriminated himself during the pointing out of the crime scene, and that his evidence tallied with the testimony of Gudryn Schoeman.
“Nkosi put himself on the crime scene by pointing out the crime scenes,” said Teffo
He had told Captain Martinus Roussou, from the Hawks in Middelburg, that he was at the farm on December 16.
“You said you climbed next to the roof to the top floor of the house and on the first floor, went through a door inside the house.
“You also pointed to the bedroom where Schoeman was found lying on a bed, and attacked him… your accomplice strangled him on his throat until he was unconscious,” said Teffo.
She said Nkosi had shown Roussou how they waited for Gudryn Schoeman to enter the room and how they attacked her before demanding money from her.
“You pointed how Nyathi searched the cupboards, where keys to the couple’s car were fetched and how you left the farm with the wife on the way to Belfast ATM.
“You even pointed the accident scene at the Carolina R33 road, where the Honda Jazz you were travelling in with Schoeman’s wife had the accident.”
Teffo said that, during a trial-within-a-trial, it became clear that Nkosi had not been assaulted to confess to the crime.
“Captain Roussou testified the interpretation was not met with difficulties. Your rights were explained and interpreted. You never even raised to him you were assaulted during the interview and you even signed the rights document.
“If you did raise any complaint to Captain Roussou, he should have asked you to lay charges against those responsible,” said Teffo.
The judge said Nkosi had claimed he was home that night and had no alibi.
“I am satisfied you were involved in the commission of the crime. You are therefore found guilty beyond reasonable doubt on all five counts.”
She said that although the blood samples taken from the car used in the crime, which later crashed into a wall, matched Nyathi’s, the State had failed to prove its case against him.
“Testimony by Pretoria laboratory Warrant Officer Matome Arthur Manyama stated there was error regarding the CAS number. The CAS number on the sample bag was 37122011, instead of 37122010.
“Although Manyama communicated with W/O Orcilla Loubser to rectify the mistake, Loubser herself did not mention it in her testimony,” she said.
“Due to the fact that a proper procedure was not followed by the police
team, there is doubt about contamination.”
Although Nyathi had been unable to explain how his blood came to be on the car’s bumper, she do not accept the DNA results, Teffo said.
“There is no evidence which positively links Nyathi to the crime and he is acquitted of all charges,” she said.
South Africa’s multiracial and multicultural society is exploding into a never-ending Kulturkampf or American-style culture war. Anti-racists are the new racists, spreading intolerance and even violence ahead of them with a megaphone, figuratively speaking. During the court appearance of a wine farmer, Mr Johnny Burger, the crowd in the Cape had been swept up into a lynch mob threatening to kill him on the spot. Police had to use pepper spray and a stun grenade to disperse them. Shades of the Ku Klux Klan? Except here the Klansmen are anti-racists.
Anti-racist intolerance is growing in leaps and bounds. In another recent incident, it led to the unfortunate resignation from Pretoria University of one of our praag columnists after Dr Piet Croucamp from the University of Johannesburg had accused her of hate speech. As I have commented elsewhere in an Afrikaans column:
“The media group Naspers and a small group of academics acting in bad faith and attacking others in the name of race, mostly for personal reasons, represent a danger to freedom of speech in South Africa.”
This afternoon I got an email from a friend saying that Mr Burger’s case reminded him of the notorius “Black Circuit” of the early nineteenth century. At the time a 1000 Cape farmers had to appear before a roving court to answer to trumped-up charges of murder, rape and assault. In the end, no-one was convicted and it was found that colonial English missionaries had colluded with local Khoi-San tribesmen to falsely accuse farmers of heinous crimes.
Contrary to our law, Mr Burger, accused of assaulting a Coloured child, was presumed guilty until his innocence could be proven. Two days ago, the Cape Times newspaper wrote about the case of Flippie Engelbrecht, the child concerned: “Those who brought the case to court charged that after the assault Engelbrecht had lost his sight, had epileptic fits, and because of this had rolled into a fire and suffered terrible burns, losing his hands.” In yesterday’s Cape Times, headlined Questions surround Flippie’s assault, “new evidence” came to light in the form of medical records showing that Flippie Engelbrecht had reported a “swelling on the side of his face”, which may have been a tumour, causing his epileptic fits and other medical problems. The same medical records contradict some of the dates advanced by the victim. However, in the meantime the wine farmer had committed suicide after his life and his business had been ruined by hysterical anti-racists pursuing him in the media, both traditional and social, led by the radical, Afrikaner-hating ex-lawyer (who was struck off the record as an attorney after dubious business deals and bankruptcy), Carina Papenfus.
So here we have two incidences of whites being subjected to histrionic public campaigns by so-called “liberal” anti-racists whose objectives have more in common with the Spanish Inquisition than with advancing the precepts of liberalism. Freedom of speech and even academic freedom in South Africa have been casualties of these campaigns, not to mention the two white victims, one committing suicide and another resigning her post and leaving the country, presumably for fear of being further persecuted.
Our universities are no longer places of learning but over-politicised shrines to political correctness and obtuse hatreds that are seemingly ignited by throwing a switch.
Volumes have been written on the cultural, linguistic, racial, anthropological, ethnic, ideological and religious divisions of South African society and I do not wish to dwell on the obvious. What concerns me more, is the apparent descent of people with nominal university qualifications into this kind of racial street fighting. They wield race and the word “racist” like a Cape Flats gangster brandishes his knife. Not so long ago, twelve schools had to be closed in that area as a result of gang activity and Mrs Helen Zille, the premier of the Western Cape, was calling for the army to be brought in to stabilise Manenberg.
Yet, ostensibly, we have more to fear from the pseudo-intellectual gangsters than from the drug-dealing, turf-warring criminals of the Cape Flats. Their influence on public discourse is far more insidious and destructive of the last vestiges of civilisation that remain in South Africa. They are intolerant zealots such as are to be found throughout history, wherever religious wars or ethnic conflicts have ignited and blazed.
Except for the Sunday paper Rapport, no-one seems to take Papenfus seriously. She waged a slanderous email and Twitter campaign against the hapless winemaker, apparently threatening and cajoling his customers into ceasing to order from him, with the intention of ruining his business and his life. Ms. Papenfus is a kind of cyber thug that replicates the intimidation tactics of petty gangsters in the public sphere. After all, as any mafioso or racketeer knows, a small business may be ruined by hitting one or two of its weak spots. Although she must have studied at one time for a degree or diploma, she has no intellectual pretensions. Her creed is simple: harass the whites. And being white and Afrikaans herself, but an ANC member, it is a case of être plus royaliste que le roi.
Papenfus is dangerous, but easily understood. The other two zealots who pounced upon the soft-spoken Pretoria woman philosopher, occupy positions of institutional power. Croucamp is a lecturer at the University of Johannesburg in political science and frequently appears on talk shows, both on radio and on television, wearing his trademark blue bandana. Schutte writes a column in the Mail & Guardian newspaper which is also avidly read by the “tenured radicals” at South Africa’s more than twenty universities.
Schutte was due to debate Croucamp’s victim on the topic: “‘Do white people have an obligation to withdraw from the public sphere?’ But as she stated in a subsequent column: “I am obviously not going to validate Louise Mabille’s hate speech by actually debating with her. Rather I will end by saying that she has presented a shining example of how whites should not participate in the public arena. It is a good thing that Louise Mabille has handed in her resignation and that the University of Pretoria has accepted it.”
From Rhodes University, we have already had an opinion by Dr Samantha Vice that all whites, i.e. everyone of European descent, should take some form of vow to remain silent in public. So white guilt leads to the ultimate form of self-censorship, public silence.
Elsewhere, Ms Gillian Schutte describes herself, somewhat pretentiously, as a “feminist-neopagan-post-structuralist-deconstructionist-socialist” and she apparently has a Master’s degree in creative writing from the University of the Witwatersrand.
The one thing we can already deduce is that the mob outside the Cape courtroom who wanted to lynch Mr Burger at least believed in some form of dialogue. They were screaming, hurling abuse and gesticulating. With police intervention and protection, one could still call it communication.
Croucamp and Schutte want to reduce us to silence, however. Theirs is the monologue of totalitarianism, of censorship, of “There is only one truth and it is mine”. They pontificate in the name of power, the corrupt power that is ruling, nay, pillaging, South Africa.
It is therefore ironic that Schutte should describe herself as a “post-structuralist-deconstructionist”. Does she even know what she is referring to? The very basis of any “deconstruction” is the existence of more than one meaning, even the uncertainty, indetermination and radical plurality of meanings. Just over ten years ago a small group of us Afrikaner thinkers had a private seminar with Jacques Derrida, the father of deconstruction, at the École des hautes études en sciences sociales on the boulevard de Raspail in Paris. I remember Derrida as a modest, soft-spoken, amiable figure who reminisced about his single visit to South Africa. He liked Potchefstroom and even told me that “Heidegger would have felt at home there”. Derrida was full of gentle irony, self-doubt and respect for others, even the Other, as he so often termed it in his more political writings.
Schutte, by contrast, is a third-world ideologue, possessed by a terrible certainty. She has more in common with Robert Mugabe or Idi Amin than Jacques Derrida. Like so many others strutting about our campuses today, she has no real culture but the fad of the moment. The more politically correct such fads are, the better. Her meretricious pseudo-intellectualism has all the charm of Winnie Mandela’s expensive sunglasses and jewellery, being the brash expression of a corrupt and power-hungry soul. Ideas are but slogans, brands, to market yourself to another kind of mob to the one that wanted to lynch the Cape winemaker.
I have often thought that South Africa today has much in common with Nero’s Rome. Our country has become murderous, corrupt and decadent. Innocence has died. Approximately a thousand children are raped every day, including babies, and nobody says a word. Or if they broach the subject, they are immediately reduced to silence, given the ritual knife for disembowelling themselves. Schutte’s smug satisfaction (“It is a good thing that Louise Mabille has handed in her resignation and that the University of Pretoria has accepted it”) may be deconstructed to reveal two things: Schadenfreude and a paradoxical expectation of honour in others.
There is no English word for Schadenfreude, hence the German loanword that is universally used. However, the Afrikaans (and Dutch) term leedvermaak expresses the same thing, with a few more connotations (“signifieds” for post-structuralists) thrown in. The other day I tweeted in Afrikaans, something to the effect that leedvermaak is the apotheosis of journalism in South Africa. Vermaak also means entertainment, hence the misery of others, their travails amid hysterical accusations, calumny and vilification provide entertainment. Anti-racist Blitzkrieg, either on the vineyards of the Cape or on the campus of Pretoria University, therefore feeds the sensationalist mainstream media machine, sated on the blood of murder victims.
Celebrity “businessman” Kenny Kunene
Due to the surfeit of murders in South Africa, people are becoming bored with news of another killing, no matter how ruthless and macabre. Celebrity murder, such as the Oscar Pistorius case, is still news, but not even serial killings elicit much attention. In a society as utterly cruel and corrupt as ours, we are in desperate need of frivolity, such as the camp antics of that incorrigible clown in drag, Pieter-Dirk Uys, or Kenny Kunene’s parties where guests eat sushi off the bodies of bikini-clad ladies.
South Africa is profoundly amoral. It lacks a moral or ethical code to define right and wrong. Someone like Baudrillard would say that this “lack”, in a psychoanalytical sense, creates a need for a kind of pseudo-ethics, a moral simulacrum.
This is where anti-racism comes in. Anti-racism is the simulacrum of our lost moral code. It is no coincidence that the objectionable sentence in Louise Mabille’s column contained references to both Calvinism and baby rape, the former marking the overtly Christian morality of the old South Africa and the latter epitomising the radical “freedom from all scruples” that characterises the new South Africa.
In this respect, Gillian Schutte, despite her evidently defective grasp of some basic philosophical and literary concepts, understands the “new amorality” well. In one of her “feminist” videos, a rape victim explains that the “cure” for the shame attached to having been raped, is to join the so-called “slutwalk”, ardently recommended by Ms. Schutte. By self-identifying as a slut, a woman is freed from the fear of rape and “forced sex” as it is euphemistically called. Miracle cures are to be found everywhere in South Africa, peddled by immigrant Nigerian pastors and indigenous witchdoctors alike. Not to forget the infamous “virgin cleansing myth” by which one may be cured of HIV-Aids by raping a virgin, including an infant, and which Louise Mabille alluded to in her column.
Gillian Schutte is also a champion of the word “cunt” which, according to her, should become part of our everyday discourse. As she puts it,
“When women finally reclaim and speak this word, its full potential will be released and women will repossess their collective cunt-power and rise up against misogyny and patriarchy with the absolute intent of ending it.”
Amid the universal amorality and Neronic decadence of South Africa, Schutte is clutching at ethical straws, more precisely: pubic hairs. Instead of simply affirming and enjoying the slutwalk, she opts for the simulacrum of the good, which has now turned out to be the “collective cunt-power” of women.
But there is no “good” anymore. South Africa is really living according to the famous maxim from Dostoyevsky’s Brothers Karamazov: “If there is no God, then everything is permitted.” As I intimated the other day, SA really stands for “Sadists’ Apocalypse”. Eighteenth-century French literature, specifically the writings of the Marquis de Sade, is all that we have to remotely begin to understand our baby rapists and farm murderers.
Apart from Gillian Schutte’s “cunt-power”, the other pseudo-morality that people desperately cling to is anti-racism. In our sadistic universe where nothing is wrong, some people imagine that racism is the one remaining sin. You may kill, rape, bribe, lie and steal, more or less with impunity, but uttering the word “Bantu” will earn you the opprobrium of polite society, that society which is now reappropriating the magical power of four-letter words.
The simulacrum of sin is transgression of anti-racist etiquette. That alone awakens some form of long-lost moral response which is delivered with predictable ecclesiastical ritual: denunciation, excommunication, prohibition, censorship. From the TV studio did Schutte, the high priestess of atavistic cunt-power and pagan ritual, deliver her sermon against what Orwell called thoughtcrime: “racist” thoughts and suspicions, including the mere mention of “baby rape”, which is a proven and documented phenomenon in this country.
Did Johnny Burger, the Cape winemaker, commit suicide to save his honour? In a country where “trial by media” and populist passions have come to influence courts and the judicial system, Burger probably correctly surmised that he would not receive a fair trial. His suicide reminds me of the death of the patrician Latin author Petronius who, having got wind of Nero’s henchmen being sent to kill him, preferred taking his own life while drinking wine and having musicians perform for him.
Thanks to Carina Papenfus’s hate campaign, no-one will ever drink Burger’s wine again.
Similarly to Burger, Louise Mabille fell upon her own sword and resigned. Understandably, there is despair and pessimism among the remaining class of thinking people in South Africa. We are outnumbered and outscreamed by those who are playing for the gallery.
However, notwithstanding samurai customs, there are other ways of saving one’s honour. On these shores, we have the example of the bittereinder, of someone fighting to the very, bitter end, against all odds.
Are we ready for that thankless struggle, knowing full well that we shall face calumny all the way? If reason be dead, can thought or the mind still withstand the mob, baying for our blood?
AfriForum is considering legal action against a police investigator after a case was thrown out of court and a farm attacker was freed due to gross negligence by the police.
The victims of the attack, Mr Noël McSeveney, and his wife, Alta, were attacked by two men in June 2013 on their farm just outside of Malelane, Mpumalanga. Mr McSeveney was wounded in the attack, and in his efforts to protect himself and his wife, he killed one attacker and wounded the other.
According to Nantes Kelder, Head of the Investigative Unit at AfriForum, the case against the accused took place in absentia. The investigating officer allegedly failed to present a medical report to the court to confirm that the accused was still in hospital, receiving treatment. As a result, the case was thrown out.
The Investigative Unit of AfriForum also made a report available earlier this year on mistakes made by the police during their investigations of farm attacks. “The blatant negligence of the police means that an attacker is now free and the victims have to live in fear. The investigator should be held responsible,” said Kelder.
AfriForum will take on the case on behalf of Mr McSeveney. Kelder added that the incidence of farm attacks and violent crimes is unacceptably high. One would think that such cases would be handled with great care, in order to ensure that justice is served.
A warrant for the arrest of the accused has been issued, but AfriForum has heard that he could not be traced.
The horror started just before midnight on Wednesday this week.
After listening to the latest television news about the health of Nelson Mandela, a South African family living not far from the former President’s hospital unit turned in for the night.
But Roelof and Laura du Plessis, a married couple with four children who live on a heavily fortified farm outside Pretoria, did not have a peaceful night’s rest.
In fact they were about to become the latest victims of what white pressure groups in this troubled nation say is nothing less than a savage war against them.
Hearing noises outside their home, Mr du Plessis, 46, got out of bed and ran outside.
To his horror, he found his 19-year-old son being held with a gun to his head by a gang of five armed black attackers.
Father and son were ordered to lie on the ground. The invaders did not ask for money or the keys to the expensive vehicles in the drive. They were there only to terrorise and kill.
Hearing voices outside, Laura, 44, came out of her bedroom to investigate — and her torch illuminated an awful scene as the gang pointed guns at her husband.
Her son managed to get up and sprint off into the darkness when the men were confused by the flashlight. But Du Plessis was not so lucky.
The intruders opened fire at once, shooting him six times through the throat, lungs and abdomen.
As he writhed on the ground in agony, the men ran off into the night leaving empty bullet cartridges littering the yard.
In the darkness, Laura attempted heart massage on her husband, who could still talk despite his appalling injuries, but to no avail.
When I arrived at the farm on Thursday and was invited in by Mrs du Plessis, I found her with blood still caked under her fingernails after she’d cradled her dying husband.
‘He was shot through the lungs and I was doing CPR,’ she told me, between huge sobs. ‘He said “please go and fetch the car and take me to hospital”. But he was too badly hurt and he died in my arms.’
In the morning, when white friends from neighbouring farms followed the trail of the raiders, they discovered the men had carefully cut through fences and skirted areas with security patrols — suggesting how closely they had planned their route of attack.
‘It is definitely coming down to a race thing,’ Laura du Plessis told me as she was comforted by her family. ‘They hate white people. We have never had a fight with any black people. I always stop and give others a lift. We employ black people.
‘My husband fought for me. I am grateful that he wasn’t tied up and forced to watch me being raped before he was killed. He was an amazing man. He was my life.’
A friend of the family, who asked not to be named, told me he was certain that the killings are part of a sinister, systematic bid to drive white people — and, in particular, farmers — out of South Africa.
‘If this was happening in any other country, the military would be deployed to protect us,’ said the friend. ‘There are gangs moving around the country targeting white people.’
Of course the violence and privations South Africa’s blacks faced under apartheid were just as unforgiveable. Certainly, there would have been more bloodletting after the white government fell in the Nineties were it not for Mandela’s message of reconciliation.
But now, as he nears death, fears are growing that a wave of violence will be unleashed against the white population.
The statistics — and the savagery of the killings — appear to support claims by these residents that white people, and farmers in particular, are being targeted by black criminals.
Little wonder that what unfolded on the Du Plessis homestead has sent tremors of fear through the three-million-strong white community.
Last month alone there were 25 murders of white landowners, and more than 100 attacks, while Afrikaner protest groups claim that more than 4,000 have been killed since Mandela came to power — twice as many as the number of policemen who have died.
It is not just the death toll, but the extreme violence that is often brought to bear, that causes the greatest fear in the white community.
Documented cases of farm killings make for gruesome reading, with children murdered along with their parents, one family suffocated with plastic bags and countless brutal rapes of elderly women and young children.
These horrors have prompted Genocide Watch — a respected American organisation which monitors violence around the world — to claim that the murders of ‘Afrikaner farmers and other whites is organised by racist communists determined to drive whites out of South Africa, nationalise farms and mines, and bring on all the horrors of a communist state’.
Indeed, a disturbing number of whites are terrified that Mandela’s passing will lead to an outpouring of violence from black South Africans, no longer contained by the sheer power of the great man’s presence, which endures today even though he stood down as president in 1999.
For its part, the ruling ANC party dismisses claims that such murders are part of any sinister agenda, pointing out that South Africans of all colours suffer violent crime, and that wealthy whites are simply more likely to be targeted.
Perhaps. But white nerves have not been soothed by the disturbing behaviour of Jacob Zuma, the ANC’s leader and the country’s third black president since Mandela.
There has been an increase in murders of white farmers in a country where there are already 60 murders each day
At a centenary gathering of the African National Congress last year, Zuma was filmed singing a so-called ‘struggle song’ called Kill The Boer (the old name for much of the white Afrikaner population).
As fellow senior ANC members clapped along, Zuma sang: ‘We are going to shoot them, they are going to run, Shoot the Boer, shoot them, they are going to run, Shoot the Boer, we are going to hit them, they are going to run, the Cabinet will shoot them, with the machine-gun, the Cabinet will shoot them, with the machine-gun . . .’
Alongside him was a notorious character called Julius ‘Juju’ Malema, a former leader of the ANC youth league, who is now Zuma’s bitter enemy and is reportedly planning to launch a new political party after Mandela’s death.
A bogeyman to white South Africans, Malema is popular among young blacks, and has also been an enthusiastic singer of Kill The Boer and another song called Bring Me My Machine-Gun.
Polls this week showed a huge surge in support among young black South Africans for his policies, which he says will ignore reconciliation, and fight for social justice in an ‘onslaught against [the] white male monopoly’.
With chilling echoes of neighbouring Zimbabwe, where dictator Robert Mugabe launched a murderous campaign to drive white farmers off the land in 2000, Malema wants all white-owned land to be seized without compensation, along with nationalisation of the country’s lucrative mines.
Ominously, Malema, 32, who wears a trademark beret and has a fondness for Rolex watches, this month promised his new party will take the land from white people without recompense and give it to blacks.
‘We need the land that was taken from our people, and we are not going to pay for it,’ he said. ‘We need a party that will say those who were victims of apartheid stand to benefit unashamedly, and those who perpetuated apartheid must show remorse and behave in a manner that says they regret their conduct.’
Enthusiastically backed by Winnie Mandela, Nelson’s second wife — who is still hugely popular in South Africa despite her suspected role in several murders — Malema is a charismatic figure who once threw a BBC correspondent out of a press conference for asking about his wealthy lifestyle.
His words have done nothing to allay the fears of white communities, some of which have taken extreme measures to protect themselves.
This week I visited Kleinfontein in Pretoria, a white-only community of 1,000 men, women and children who live behind high fences, with a gatehouse manned by men in military fatigues, who also carry out regular patrols of the grounds to prevent black intruders entering.
Anyone without an appointment with an official resident is refused entry. If they are black, they will not get in at all.
Inside, there is a shopping mall, while the town has its own water supply and sewage system. All manual work is carried out by white residents.
There is a rugby pitch, opulent homes overlooking miles of open countryside where antelope and zebra roam, and a hospital for the elderly residents.
Most crucially of all, in a country with 60 murders a day, there is no armed robbery, murder or rape in Kleinfontein. ‘An old lady can draw money here without any fear,’ says Marisa Haasbroek, a resident, mother of two teenage girls, and my guide for the morning.
‘It’s safe, quiet and peaceful. It’s not racist — it is about protecting our Afrikaner cultural identity.’
Like all the residents, she is descended from the first Afrikaners, the Dutch settlers who came to South Africa and were driven into the African interior on the famous Great Trek during the war with the British from 1899 to 1902.
Kleinfontein has been in existence since Mandela’s first presidency in 1994 — but its existence remained largely unknown until reports last year that black police officers had been barred from entry to the property.
To get round race laws, Kleinfontein insists its criteria for entry are not based on skin colour. It claims to exist to protect distinct Afrikaans-speaking people and culture, and that English-speaking white people are also banned, so the community is non-racist.
The Afrikaners, of course, were those who devised and presided over apartheid, a gruesome social experiment that did so much to divide the nation and subjugate the black population.
With Mandela on a life support machine, the founders of this community in the so-called ‘Rainbow Nation’ were this week being inundated with requests by other whites to join them.
‘I think there will be trouble,’ Anna, an elderly lady tending her garden inside the all-white compound, tells me.
‘There may be tribal warfare first between the black races. Then they might turn on us.’
Standing near a sign written in Afrikaans stating ‘ons is hier om te bly’ (we are here to stay), Marike, another resident, was convinced that there is a sinister plot to kill all whites.
‘You don’t attack farms and rape 80-year-old women with broken bottles and kill their husbands for a mobile phone,’ Marike says. ‘People say it’s not genocide — but it is.’ – Daily Mail
We have a serious crisis in this country. With many millions of South Africans affected by poverty and unemployment, many millions more are expected to be affected. With high food prices already knocking the pockets of every South African, we can expect astronomical prices in the coming years and a scarcity of basic food stuffs. “A scarcity in basic food stuffs? You must be joking!” That’s what I’d say 10 years ago, but no longer. From an agricultural giant and leading world exporter, we have quickly found ourselves in the realm of net importer status. All because the ruling party got it wrong.
After our transition to democracy, the ANC decided that land redistribution was the way to go. And like planting seeds, they drew up their policies and passed a number of bills. These plans were meant to redistribute white farmers’ land to black farmers and to communities which were previously the ‘rightful owners’. Today, many years down the line, these seeds have grown to such an extent that a disaster looms for all. Let me illustrate the ruling party’s end produce.
Decline in commercial farmers, skills lost in 1994 there were some 120 000 commercial farmers but today a mere 37 000 remain. Yes, many of the previously 120 000 commercial farmers were white and transformation needed to take place, but with a sum total of 37 000 commercial farmers today, how many successful, black, commercial farmers have we produced and how many successful, white, commercial farmers has our country lost?
Farming has become “SA’s most dangerous job”. The threat of being the next farm murder victim (almost 4 000 farmers since 1994) and the threat of land grabs have resulted in many successful, white, farmers packing their bags and heading for greener pastures. And many of these farmers have indeed found greener pastures abroad and in other African countries. Congo, Malawi, Uganda, Tanzania and Mozambique are some of the governments who have invited them to farm in their countries on land earmarked for farming.
Other countries such as Gabon, Guinea and Ghana are also in talks. The starving continent of Africa has a huge demand for agriculture, job creation and filling empty stomachs. What better place for these farmers to apply their knowledge and skills. Further up north, Georgia has invited this group of endangered species to attempt to revive their agricultural industry by providing land and equipment. Quoting the Georgian government spokesperson, “South African farmers are some of the best farmers in the world. They have good experience and we would like to see such farms in Georgia. There is a lot of potential here.”
Regarding Georgian farmers who generally struggle to earn a decent living, “They want to set up joint ventures with South African farmers because they think they could raise the profitability and productivity of their farms,” he said. “They are more than delighted to have South African farmers and South African expertise on their farms.”
Meanwhile our government has opposing, often moronic, views to the rest of Africa. The Agriculture Minister, Tina Joemat-Pettersson, last week said the following regarding the departure of commercial farmers from South Africa, “This will not be a threat to food security in South Africa; instead, this will enhance food security in the continent.” This a real irony considering that other countries are trying to do the same thing but by attracting our farmers to their farm lands. It gets more idiotic when she says, “South Africa has skills it can share with other South Africans and with the rest of the continent.”
To an educated mind it would appear that skills are departing with the departing farmers and these skills are to be applied in other African countries indefinitely. Back at home, along with the loss of these farmers and their skills and experience, the former workers of these farms have lost their jobs. From around 1.6 million tax-paying farm workers (mainly black) which were employed in 1994, to around 300 000 in just 16 years.
I challenge anyone to provide me with intelligent reasons on how losing 83 000 commercial farmers and losing over a million jobs are to the advantage of our country and our people.
Demise of profitable, food producing farms According to the ANC itself last year, 90% of redistributed farms do not produce excess food. Farms which once produced hundreds of thousands of tons of produce and employed hundreds of workers now lie idle and are a mere shell of what they used to be. The remaining few black farmers are but a handful and use the land for subsistence farming.
Mismanagement, corruption and the lack of sufficient skills and experience has had catastrophic effects on many farms. To mention one of a thousand examples of farms which are now liquidated/idle/non-producing:
The Zebediela Citrus Estate (Limpopo) – Once described in the Readers’ Digest, “400 million oranges are harvested each year from the groves of Zebediela, the world’s biggest citrus estate. The output is sufficient to provide one orange for every eight people on earth.” This magnificent farm went from riches to ruins in just a few years after being taken over by the state.
Yet the talk/threat of land grabs/redistribution continues.
To avoid looking like a second Zimbabwe and forcibly removing white farmers off their land, the government has now come up with cunning plan to grab land without having to remove the white farmers by force. This plan is called the “Land Tenure Security Bill”. If signed off by the ANC government it will amongst other things, give farm workers the right to keep livestock on the farms where they work, which will be allowed to graze “indiscriminately” on the property.
The bill will also give workers the right to plant their own crops and build homes for themselves and close relatives, from which they may never be removed. Andy Tladi, a black sunflower farmer, says he is leaving to the DRC this year as the bill “gives farm workers a ‘blank cheque’ to do whatever they want to do on land that doesn’t belong to them. The bill is going to worsen the situation for farmers. You are actually going to see workers putting up villages on farms. If you allow 10 people to build houses on a farm, in about 20 years you could have up to 30 families. So how does the farmer continue to grow and invest under those circumstances? I am a black farmer and I won’t be able to handle that. A lot of farmers will fly out of the country.”
The high likelihood of failure for black farmers is a reality. Without the necessary skills and experience, even a successful farm which has been acquired through redistribution most often fails. Then when a rare success does happen, more often than not, there is a lack of backing from government which leads to failure or inability to grow. Steven Mohale, a leading black, tomato farmer in Limpopo, has been battling for years to get government assistance in order to grow his business. But it seems the only help he received was from private banks and white farmers.
To quote an article about Steven in Farmers Weekly, “I’m very disappointed in the way the government treats farmers. It’s high time government stopped insulting farmers. We spend a lot of time with white farmers in this area and almost all are very helpful. People who accuse farmers of bad things are talking nonsense. South Africans need to realise the sector is responsible for feeding the nation and creating employment – and so farmers deserve respect. But government’s attitude doesn’t help.”
In conclusion, it is clearly obvious to someone with a little bit of intelligence that we are heading for disaster. In fact we are already looking at a disaster if you look at how the majority has suffered in the last decade or so in terms of poverty, unemployment and starvation. Billions of taxpayers’ rands have been pumped into redistribution projects and this money has literally been flushed down the toilet, not to mention the millions stolen by corrupt, ANC linked officials. Now billions more has to be spent of which another 90% will be wasted. With calls for 100% nationalisation by Julius Malema, we could be in for even more serious trouble. At this moment I do not see much hope for agriculture in our country and in turn not much hope for the economy and our people.
One of the biggest liberal myths in South Africa is that whites own 87% of the land. If you consider that 70% of the country consists of the Karoo desert, there is only 30% with any rainfall to speak of. Blacks have always owned at least half of that in the form of tribal lands where mostly subsistence farming is practised with land being administered according to the whims of the chief. You have his permission to plant or let your cattle graze, but it could be revoked anytime.
The government also owns huge tracts of land. Instead of developing that land, as well as the tribal lands, the government wants to punish white farmers for being successful! As many analysts and economists have pointed out, they are actually using taxpayers’ funds to take land out of production and turn it into subsistence land as in the tribal areas. That is why our agricultural production has been declining, with food prices going up all the time.
The worst is: South African blacks are just not interested in agriculture. Most of them would prefer to have a city job, earn a big salary and spend it on branded consumer goods. But government sees the large number of white-owned farms as a political and strategic problem. It prevents them from pushing whites around at will and even expelling them if need be, as in Zimbabwe.
Another burning issue around land reform is that we have some foreign academics, real “tenured radicals” who have got posts at our universities – heaven knows how – and are now pushing a radical socialist agenda when it comes to land ownership. One such person is Dr. Ruth Hall of a group called PLAAS (Institute for Poverty, Land and Agrarian Studies).
More than 4 000 white farmers and their family members have been killed, with many tortured to death in dehumanising, atrocious ways. They are made to drink boiling water, burned with hot irons or simply hacked to pieces with their corpses displayed afterwards in ways that remind one of Satanic rituals.
Personally, I think the vicious attacks on Afrikaner farmers stem from three things: recent history, African culture and radical left-wing ideology.
During the ANC’s terror campaign in the 1980s, they not only placed bombs in diners and supermarkets, but they also buried limpet mines on farm roads, blowing up white families, as well as black farm workers. So this culture of terrorist violence has taken root and still continues by other means.
A game farm in South Africa
The second factor is not politically correct to mention, but it needs to be said that in traditional African culture there is a fascination with the power of horror and violence. A few hundred people are still murdered every year for body parts to be used in so-called muti or “medicine”. So mix terrorism with horror and you are on your way to unstoppable violence.
The third ingredient is left-wing ideology or what Americans call “liberalism” which amounts to the same thing. There is a whole industry in South Africa, but mostly funded from abroad by Scandinavian governments and American liberal foundations, which advocates radical land reform and Soviet-style collectivist agriculture in our country. To them private property means next to nothing and they indirectly encourage some of these Einsatzgruppen to just go out and kill white farmers indiscriminately. They are dreaming of a brave new world without family-owned or privately-held farms and the murders suit them.
Land reform and the propaganda around it are fuelling ethnic conflict in South Africa which few outsiders are prepared to acknowledge, except the organisation Genocide Watch which looks at it more analytically in terms of other identity conflicts world-wide.
There definitely is a risk of full-scale genocide in South Africa, although for the moment the organisation for that is largely lacking. At present it is more of a random process, driven by the three factors mentioned above.
It is also important to understand that whites and blacks do not naturally hate each other. The current conflict is being driven by outsiders – Europeans, Americans and perhaps even Mugabe who has accused Mandela of being “soft on whites” – who will gain through a collapse of South African agriculture. They will be able to buy land, machinery and other agricultural assets on the cheap and so extend the neo-colonial hold that they have on our country already.
This website uses cookies to improve your experience. We'll assume you're ok with this, but you can opt-out if you wish. Cookie settingsACCEPT
Privacy & Cookies Policy
Privacy Overview
This website uses cookies to improve your experience while you navigate through the website. Out of these cookies, the cookies that are categorized as necessary are stored on your browser as they are essential for the working of basic functionalities of the website. We also use third-party cookies that help us analyze and understand how you use this website. These cookies will be stored in your browser only with your consent. You also have the option to opt-out of these cookies. But opting out of some of these cookies may have an effect on your browsing experience.
Necessary cookies are absolutely essential for the website to function properly. This category only includes cookies that ensures basic functionalities and security features of the website. These cookies do not store any personal information.
Any cookies that may not be particularly necessary for the website to function and is used specifically to collect user personal data via analytics, ads, other embedded contents are termed as non-necessary cookies. It is mandatory to procure user consent prior to running these cookies on your website.
Crime statistics released by Minister of Police Nathi Mthethwa in September showed that murder increased by 650 cases, to 16259, a 4.2% increase from 2012.
