A gun pressed to his forehead, Hopewell farmer Mark Anthony looked into the cold eyes of the black man who was about to kill him, and then heard him pull the trigger.
He expected everything to fade to black, but realised he could still feel his heart racing, and the hooded man was still standing in front of him.
The man cocked the gun and pulled the trigger again, and again, but still nothing happened.
Yesterday morning Anthony’s partner said she was asleep when a voice told her to wake up at around 12.30.
“It was divine intervention. I knew I had to get up and I walked through to the lounge but I couldn’t see anything.
“I ran back to the room and told Mark he needed to wake up.”
Anthony switched the light on and walked through to the lounge and found one of the windows had been broken.
“I stuck my head through the hole in the window and saw a man lurking in the shadows, against the outside wall.
“I shouted at him but instead of running away, he ran straight at me.
“He pulled the glass from the window, climbed inside and pulled out a gun. He said: ‘I am going to shoot you’.
“He pulled the trigger twice and it didn’t go off. My heart was racing.”
Anthony said he had placed a spade behind the lounge door the previous day and decided to make a run for it.
“I grabbed the spade and just started swinging it at the man. He ran behind the table in the lounge and called to his partner outside.”
Outraged
Anthony said the partner jumped through the window and pulled out a firearm and began shooting at Anthony.
“He fired at me eight times. Not once did that gun discharge.”
Meanwhile, the woman had run outside and began screaming for help.
“I ran out the back door and screamed for help. I saw the neighbour’s lights switch on. That’s when I think the men ran away.
“If I hadn’t woken up, we both would have been dead. God protected and saved us.”
They said they were moving out as soon as possible.
“If Sarah hadn’t woken me up, Weekend Witness would not be here writing this story. They would have been writing my obituary,” said Anthony.
The couple said the Thornville police acted swiftly and placed great importance on the pair’s safety.
KwaZulu-Natal Agricultural Union (KwaNalu) security desk head Koos Marais said they were outraged that another farming family had been attacked, making it the 30th farm attack in KZN this year.
“We are grateful that no lives were lost and trust the police will do all in their power to bring those men to trial.”
He urged police to increase visible policing in all rural areas and encouraged people living in isolated areas to ensure their homes were secure.
Plessislaer SAPS spokesperson Captain Musa Ntombela said no arrests had been made and an investigation was under way.
Zimbabwe’s government has for the first time suggested it may give official permission for some white farmers to stay on their land, 15 years after it sanctioned widespread land grabs that plummeted the country into an economic crisis.
Douglas Mombeshora, the Zanu-PF Lands Minister, said provincial leaders had been asked to draw up a list of white farmers they wanted to stay on their farms deemed to be “of strategic economic importance”.
“We have asked provinces to give us the names of white farmers they want to remain on farms so that we can give them security of tenure documents to enable them to plan their operations properly,” Mr Mombeshora said.
Beneficiaries of the land grabs that started in 2000, mostly President Robert Mugabe’s officials and allies, will in the future also have to pay a small rental per acre which will be used in part to pay compensation to evicted white farmers.
More than 4,000 white farmers lost their land after Mr Mugabe lost a referendum to the new Movement for Democratic Change party and, in a bid to regain popularity, authorised land grabs by disaffected war veterans.
Today, fewer than 300 white farmers remain on portions of their original land holdings in Zimbabwe and many of the seized farms lie fallow, meaning the former Breadbasket of Africa has to import food to feed its population.
Among remaining farmers who have been recommended for a reprieve of Mr Mugabe’s edict that whites can no longer own land in Zimbabwe is Elizabeth Mitchell, a poultry farmer who produces 100,000 day-old chicks each week.
Her farm, Barquest, which lies around 160 miles south of Harare in Masvingo Province, had been allocated by the government to Walter Mzembi, the tourism minister, but he recently retreated after the provincial leadership backed her request to stay.
Shuvai Mahofa, Masvingo’s Provincial Affairs Minister, has recommended five more white farmers be issued with 99-year leases because their operations were, she said, of “strategic economic importance”.
Mr Mugabe regularly tells white farmers who have survived years of uncertainty, violence and threats to move off the parcels of land they have hung on to.
“Don’t be too kind to white farmers,” Mr Mugabe told supporters at a recent Zanu PF rally. “They can own industries and companies, or stay in apartments in our towns but they cannot own land. They must leave the land to blacks.”
Mr Mombeshora also announced the long-delayed establishment of a “Land Commission”, which the EU has said it will help fund, to survey how seized white farms were distributed during the chaotic and sometimes violent land grab.
He said new land laws were almost ready to go before parliament which would require beneficiaries to pay rent. Those funds would, he said, be used to start a process of compensation for evicted white farmers.
George Charamba, Mr Mugabe’s spokesman, told The Telegraph during a recent visit to South Africa that the review would be “founded on productivity” and beneficiaries would be subjected to a “use it or lose it” rule.
“Not many have made land reform work and they will not hold on to it if they are not making it sweat,” he said. “There will be tears, black tears this time.”
Hendrik Olivier, director of the Commercial Farmers Union, which represents interests of thousands of evicted white farmers and the roughly 300 who remain, said he was “pleased” the government was talking about compensation and urged more farmers be given the right to stay.
“So many of the evicted farmers are old now and destitute and desperate for compensation,” he said.
He said he hoped that the UK, would, as the former coloniser and in accordance with Zimbabwe’s constitution since 1992, also meet its commitments to paying some compensation.
“If the UK, alone or with other donors, paid the small amount for the land, we believe international financiers, such as the World Bank would assist Zimbabwe pay white farmers for the more expensive part of the deal, improvements to the land,” he said.
“We doubt the government will raise enough money from rentals to pay much compensation, but it is a start.”
Zimbabwe has intensified its war against white farmers. The land grab has already sparked severe food shortages and has contributed to massive inflation.
The country’s lands and resettlement minister Douglas Mombeshora wants at least 163 white commercial farmers in Mashonaland East evicted with no compensation.
This follows after President Robert Mugabe recent vows to expel the country’s last remaining white farmers from their land.
“We don’t need a white man to continue to guide us. No. We are now equipped with skills,” Mugabe was quoted as saying during a party to celebrate his 91st birthday in Victoria Falls last Saturday.
The land grabs were set to continue despite Mugabe publicly admitting earlier that ill-equipped black “war veterans”, have laid to waste vast tracts of farmland seized from whites under his controversial land reforms.
But Mugabe nevertheless continues to reward his party cronies and political allies with farms confiscated from whites.
According to New Zimbabwe.com, more than 160 white commercial farmers in Mashonaland East province will soon be removed from their properties as the government says they are occupying the land “illegally”.
Meanwhile, News Day reported on Thursday that the European Union had warned Mugabe over his threat for more land grabs saying the move could ruin business re-engagement efforts between Zimbabwe and the EU block.
The EU recently lifted restrictions on most government officials, but retained Mugabe and his wife Grace on the sanctions list.
“Whites will never own land in Zimbabwe”
Mugabe and his ruling Zanu-PF party launched the land reforms in 2000, taking over white-owned farms to resettle only black Shona peasants belonging to his own tribe, to “correct colonial land ownership imbalances”.
At least 4 000 white commercial farmers were evicted from their farms, together with black Ndebele peasants. Mugabe launched an ethnic cleansing campaign after independence in which 20 000 black Ndebeles were massacred by his ruling tribe.
The land seizures have often been violent, claiming the lives of several white farmers, but despite losing ownership, many have survived unlike their white South African counterparts.
Some “war veterans” from Zimbabwe’s 1970s liberation struggle claiming land, are teenagers or in their twenties, adding to the sad farce.
The new Expropriation Bill of 2015 was recently released by the minister of public works, Thulas Nxesi, and is due to be enacted into law this year. The 2015 Bill is just as unconstitutional as its predecessors of 2008 and 2013. It still gives the State the power to take ownership and possession of property of virtually any kind by notice to the owner – and without a prior court order confirming the constitutional validity of the expropriation.
The Bill also puts great pressure on expropriated owners to accept whatever amounts of compensation the State might offer. Particularly telling is a clause saying owners will be deemed to have accepted these amounts unless they sue for more within two months. Given the high cost of litigation, most people will be reluctant to risk this.
The Government claims the 2015 Bill will cure the constitutional defects in the current Expropriation Act of 1975, but this is simply not true. Mr. Nxesi’s Bill should thus be abandoned and replaced by a new amendment bill that is fully compliant with the Constitution. Such a bill can easily be crafted by amending the current Act in three key ways, as this issue of @Liberty explains.IRR_@Liberty_1-2015_-_4_March_2015 (1)
Agriculture is being punished, farmers’ organisation TAU SA said on Wednesday. Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene’s 2015/16 budget increased fuel taxes and made no allocation towards drought relief.
“With the current severe drought, we would have liked that the minister [of finance] would have made an allocation for drought relief in advance,” TAU SA said in a statement.
“The earlier farmers who are hit by the drought can be helped back on their feet, the less food needs to be imported. Imports of food will have an adverse impact on the country’s payment balance.”
The cutting of the overall agriculture budget to R6.38bn showed it was not a priority, the organisation said.
The fuel levy would not bode well for farmers.
“This will have a negative effect on the economy, while it will lead to rising food prices.
“Whether it’s a wise decision to allocate as much to emerging farmers while commercial farmers are struggling to keep their heads above water, is an open question.”
South Africa’s petrol and diesel tax amounts to 28%, but after a hefty 80.5c a litre, the tax will increase to 41%.
Finance Minister Nhlanhla Nene will add a staggering R17bn extra that motorists will cough up this year.
President Jacob Zuma’s singing of the refrain ”shoot the Boer” at an ANC event was among the reasons for the Canadian Federal Court ruling that a white South African couple could continue with their bid for asylum.
Though Charl and Naira Nel have not directly been victims of crime in this country, they say they fear genocide and rape here.
Aggravating their anxiety was Zuma’s performance of a struggle song two years ago and Julius Malema’s rendition of Dubul’Ibhunu (Shoot the Boer). The song Malema sang was declared hate speech by the Equality Court in 2011. Malema was president of the ANC Youth League at the time.
The Zuma song, at the ANC centenary celebrations in 2012, was Dubula ngembayimbayi(Shoot with a machine gun). The president sang the refrain ”shoot the Boer” several times during his rendition.
The Nels left South Africa in 2010 and applied for refugee status in Canada. They sought the assistance of Russell Kaplan, a South African expatriate lawyer who had helped white Capetonian Brandon Huntley in his fight for asylum.
In June, the federal court upheld the board’s decision to deny Huntley refugee status. He had sought asylum in 2008, claiming that he had been assaulted by black South Africans.
The board granted him refugee status in 2009 but the decision was found to be “unreasonable” on judicial review.
In their application, the Nels said ”crimes against white people frequently involved mutilation and brutality, even when nothing was stolen; they observed that political leaders had sung songs about killing white people even after a South African court had declared the song racist. They submitted expert evidence by a reporter, Adriana Stuijt, and the president of Genocide Watch, Dr Gregory Stanton, indicating these crimes were racially motivated.”
But the board refused the couple’s application, saying that although they expressed fear of persecution because they were white, it found “nothing had happened to them personally” and they were not in need of protection.
The Nels then approached the federal court.
On September 4, Judge John O’Keefe set aside the board’s decision and referred their case to another panel for reconsideration.
It is not known when this will be done.
Judge O’Keefe said: “… the board’s assessment of [ Nel’s] updated narrative is puzzling. In it, [he] said that he had become fearful of returning to South Africa because [Malema] had since sung an anti-apartheid song called Kill the Farmer, Shoot the Boer .
”Even after a South African court ruled that the song was hate speech, Malema continued to sing it and Zuma also sang it at the 100th anniversary of the ANC.
“Genocide Watch also updated the situation to stage six of the eight stages of genocide because of political shifts and warned white Afrikaners to leave South Africa,” the judge said.
”The board dismissed the updated narrative on the basis that these were not significant changes and concluded that it was only done with the intent of amplifying a situation of fear.
“However, it never explained why it felt the singing of this song by political leaders or the Genocide Watch opinion could not have legitimately inspired a further subjective fear of political persecution in the applicants.”
Kaplan told the Canadian Post: ”This is the first time the Federal Court of Canada has awarded a white South African with a favourable decision – a big step.”
From 2006 to June 2014, 151 South Africans applied for asylum. Only 23 applications were accepted.
While the ANC regime is pursuing a policy of “land restitution”, black farmers seem to have little interest in the ideological project
Another farm, owned by the state, has been found outside Hartbeesfontein in the North West in a state of serious neglect.
While the ANC regime is pursuing a policy of “land restitution”, black farmers seem to have little interest in the ideological project.
A white councillor in the Matlosana municipality, has had to provide food and water for three pigs through holes in a wall, after the pigs had been without food and water for some time.
“Another two pigs in the pen were already dead and were being eaten by the surviving pigs,” the statement said.
“The agricultural unit of the National SPCA was informed of the situation and removed the pigs after obtaining a court order.”
The farm is under the management of the Matlosana municipality and used for “local economic development projects”. Millions of rands have been spent on the farm but every project has failed.
The farm, Moria, was across from another farm, used as a provincial agriculture project, where the SPCA had to previously euthanize 28 stud cattle, and where recently a further two were found to be in a “shocking” state of malnutrition.
On July 6, The Sunday Independent reported that pigs were found starving and eating one another on the farm Modderfontein, near Potchefstroom, owned by Thandi Modise, who is National Council of Provinces chairwoman and a former North West premier.
Police and SPCA officials found dead and dying animals, including pigs, sheep, geese, goats and ducks. Many had to be put down.
It appeared the animals had been without water and food for around two weeks. There were no farmworkers on the property, no electricity, and the water pumps were broken.
Rights activist, Ben Freeth, have laid a complaint of crimes against humanity against several high ranking Zimbabwean officials.
The action stems from alleged human rights abuses by the Zimbabwean government against farm workers, commercial farmers and the opposition. They want the police to investigate the claims and eventually have the perpetrators prosecuted for crimes against mankind.
Enough evidence exists for police to start investigations. Some 33 affidavits of Zimbabwean farmers and ordinary citizens have been collected to support their claims.
Zimbabwean Human Rights Activist Ben Freeth says: “The attack has gotten worse, almost all those farmers and farm workers have been left without anything at all.”
AfriForum Legal Representative Willie Spies says: “It is important to bring the actual perpetrators to justice. Our legal system do allow for that. SA is party to the statute of Rome. In terms of our international legal obligation, SA is obliged to investigate complains that have been laid by victims.”
The Zimbabwean embassy declined to comment on the matter. Unisa International Law Professor, Gus Waschefort says, “The decision by the Zimbabwean embassy not to comment is driven by a political dimension. The crimes were committed by individuals, not the state.”
The action was prompted by the Supreme Court of Appeal that ordered the NPA to investigate crimes against humanity and human rights abuses according to the Rome Statute.
Agriculture employs 5.2% of the workforce but only accounts for 2.5% of annual gross domestic product (GDP), statistician general Pali Lehohla said on Monday.
“Agriculture contributes 2.5% of GDP, but in terms of employment agriculture punches above its weight with 5.2%,” he told reporters in Pretoria on Monday.
Lehohla was releasing figures obtained on farming in South Africa during the last population count in 2011. He said a more expansive study would be conducted on agriculture in particular.
The census showed that 2.8-million households were involved in agriculture in some form or another. It contained three questions related to agriculture but did not make a clear distinction between commercial and subsistence farming. A more nuanced picture was needed, Lehohla said.
The provinces with the highest number of households practising agriculture were KwaZulu-Natal with 24.9%, Eastern Cape with 20.7%, and Limpopo with 16.3%. The Northern Cape had the highest proportion of households that reported livestock ownership.
Lehohla said the census data would allow for a follow-up study because government had now identified the households that would be canvassed.
“The purpose was, in part, to give us a frame so that when we go for a fully-fledged agricultural census we know where to go. When we do the agriculture census we will go to those 2.8-million.”
Government planned to use the information obtained to strengthen agriculture in a bid to see the sector provide jobs to more people, he said.
Lehohla said the census showed families involved in agriculture in general had poor access to facilities, but the explanation for this might lie more in their location than in any government policy.
“We also know that agriculture is practised in rural areas where the provision of facilities is very difficult. When you look at the Eastern Cape and the altitude, when it comes to things like the provision of water, then it becomes very expensive to provide water.” – Sapa
Over the past fifteen years it has been taken as a given that commercial farmers have subjected to extremely high levels of violent and often murderous attack in South Africa. Many intellectuals and human rights organisations have however been anxious to underplay the import of this problem: The underlying concern apparently being that farmers might end up being regarded as ‘victims’ rather than as ‘perpetrators’. The line generally taken has been that there is no evidence that these attacks are in any way racially or politically motivated.
However, the question has now been raised whether farm attacks are such a unique problem at all.On Friday the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), a well-respected research organisation, issued a press statement – titled “Farmers not uniquely vulnerable to armed attack” – which claimed that the “number of farm attacks per 100 000 farmers and their families is comparable to the number of criminal attacks per 100 000 people in the general population.”
This claim has been widely reported on and could, if left unchallenged, end up being accepted as fact given the pre-existing biases of many in the media. The question needs to be asked: do the Institute’s claims hold up to scrutiny?
The SAIRR analysis was based upon farm attack figures compiled by the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU SA). The Institute used this data as the SAPS have not released farm attack figures since the 2006/2007 reporting period.
In 2011 TAU SA counted 85 farm attacks. Based on this figure the Institute calculated that “in 2011 the number of attacks per 100 000 farmers and farmworkers in the formal sector was 16.8. If it is assumed that farmworkers are not targeted and that attacks are aimed at commercial farmers and their families only, the rate of attack was 45.8 per 100 000 (assuming three dependants each).”
The Institute argued that although “It is difficult to benchmark farm attacks against other types of crimes… the rates calculated above are broadly comparable to rates per 100 000 people for other serious crimes among the general population. For example, in 2011 South Africa had a murder rate of 31.9 per 100 000 people. In that year the house robbery rate was 33.4 per 100 000. The total aggravated robbery rate was 203 per 100 000.”
On request the Institute provided the data on which it based its analysis. It reached the 45.8 per 100 000 figure by taking the number of commercial farmers in South Africa (46 400) and quadrupling the figure to 185 600 (on the assumption that each farmer has three dependents). The formula used was (85/185 600)X100 000 = 45.8 farm attacks per 100 000 people.
There are number of obvious flaws in the Institute’s methodology.
Firstly, it assumes that the average household size of a commercial farmer is four. This seems unlikely given that the average age of a commercial farmer is, according to Agri SA, 62 years. If one assumed the average household size of a commercial farmer was, for example, 2.6 the “rate of attack” would be 70.5 per hundred thousand (holding the Institute’s other assumptions constant).
Secondly, the Institute’s analysis effectively assumes that a single individual is victimised in each farm attack. In reality a single farm attack may involve several different crimes (murder, attempted murder, robbery, assault with intent to cause grievous bodily harm etc.) and more than one victim.
Thirdly, TAU SA’s figures for farm attacks include attacks on smallholdings (which do not necessarily fall under the 46 400 figure) as well as farms. This assumption, unlike the previous two, would tend to inflate the “rate of attack”. Offsetting this is the fact that Agri SA estimates that there are actually only 37,000 commercial farmers at present.
Finally, and most importantly, the TAU SA farm attack data is not comprehensive and does not claim to be. TAU SA’s data is collected from press reports and informal reporting networks. Their data on farm murders is pretty solid but there is significant under-counting of farm attacks. This can be seen by comparing TAU’s SA’s figures with those of the SAPS before the latter stopped publishing their data. See Graph 1 below.
Note: SAPS data from April to March the following year. TAU SA’s (via the SAIRR) from January to December.
In 2006/2007 the SAPS recorded 794 farm attacks as opposed to the 81 TAU SA recorded in 2006. It is unlikely that this level of under-counting has changed over the past few years. This can be illustrated by comparing TAU SA’s figures for farm attacks in KwaZulu-Natal with those collected by the KwaZulu-Natal Agricultural Union (Kwanalu). In 2011 TAU SA recorded 3 farm attacks in the province, Kwanalu 36. See Graph 2.
Sources: TAU SA figures (via the SAIRR); Koos Marais, KwaZulu-Natal Agricultural Union
All this goes to show that the Institute’s conclusions are based on incomplete data and some dubious assumptions, and they should not be regarded as reliable. The question raised by the Institute remains however: Are farmers less or more vulnerable to armed attack than other South Africans?
One alternative approach is to compare the farmer murder rate with the national murder rate. Drawing on TAU SA’s more complete statistics on confirmed farm murders Johan Burger of the Institute of Security Studies wrote that of the 50 victims in 2011 32 were farmers, 14 were direct family, three were workers and one was a visitor. He noted: “According to Statistics South Africa’s Census of Commercial Agriculture, there were 32,375 farmers (i.e. people farming either full-time or part-time) in South Africa in 2007. Therefore, the murder of 32 farmers (exclusive of their families and workers) in 2011 provides a ratio of 98.9 killings per 100,000.” This is three times the national murder rate.
One problem with this comparison is that most murders fall under the category of ‘social fabric crimes’ i.e. cases where someone is stabbed by an associate in a drunken brawl or a man beats his wife to death in a rage. A like-for-like comparison would be between the rate of farmer murders with the national rate of South Africans killed during robberies and other such crimes. In their report on the 2011/2012 crime statistics the SAPS state that 16% of murders are committed during the commissioning of other crimes. A back of the envelope calculation puts the national rate for this kind of murder then at just under 5 killings per 100 000 people.
An alternative approach to answering the question raised by the Institute would be to compare the rate of farm attacks (per 100 000 farms) with the rate of house robberies (per 100 000 households) using official SAPS data for both. The advantage of this approach is that it limits the assumptions that have to be made; uses data from the same source (the SAPS); and compares like-with-like.
There is however a limited period during which this comparison is possible. The SAPS only started collecting and publishing house robbery data in 2002/2003, and they stopped publishing “farm attack” data in 2007.
A further problem is that the headline SAPS data on farm attacks includes attacks on smallholdings. The Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Farm Attacks (July 2003) did however publish a breakdown of SAPS figures for 2001 which differentiated between attacks on farms and attacks on small holdings. See below.
Source: The Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Farm Attacks, July 2003
It is thus possible to compare the rate of farm attacks in 2001 at least with the rate of house robberies in 2002/2003. See the Table 2.
Table 2: Comparison of rate of household robberies (2002/2003) with rate of farm attacks by province (2001):
Province
Households 2002 ‘000
House robberies 2002/03
House robberies per 100 000 households
Farms(2002)
Farm attacks 2001
Attacks per 100 000 farms
Rate of farm attacks 2001/ Rate of house robberies 2002/3
Gauteng
2 683
4701
175.2
2206
18
816.0
4.7
KZN
2 073
1569
75.7
4038
108
2674.6
35.3
Mpum
768
316
41.1
5104
234
4584.6
111.4
E Cape
1 484
1397
94.1
4376
66
1508.2
16.0
W Cape
1 166
335
28.7
7185
40
556.7
19.4
N Cape
256
29
11.3
6114
12
196.3
17.3
N West
791
396
50.1
5349
87
1626.5
32.5
Limpopo
1 081
228
21.1
2915
35
1200.7
56.9
FState
713
92
12.9
8531
30
351.7
27.3
Total
11 015
9063
82.3
45818
630
1375.0
16.7
Note: These farm attack figures exclude attacks on smallholdings
On average then a farm was over fifteen times more likely to be attacked in 2001 than a household was likely to be robbed in 2002/2003. This however obscures wide variations by province. The lowest ratio of the rate of farm attacks to the rate of house robberies was in Gauteng (4.7/1) and the highest in Mpumalanga (111.4/1). The ratios in many provinces were probably, in reality, even greater given that many of those farm attack incidents (on farms and small holdings) would also have been counted as house robberies in the SAPS figures.
I do not have the breakdown for the figures for attacks on farms versus smallholdings for subsequent years. However, assuming that the proportions remained constant the rate of farm attacks compared to the rate of house robberies (per 100 000 units) would be as follows:
Assumption: 60% of recorded “farm attacks” are attacks on farms (not small holdings)
According to these estimates then the “rate of attack” on farms in South Africa has been over ten times the “rate of attack” on households. In the more rural provinces this ratio would be considerably greater. It is unlikely that this ratio has narrowed too much over the past five years. This can be seen by analysing the “rate of attack” in KwaZulu-Natal using the Kwanulu data referenced above. See Graph below.
The data collected by Kwanalu on attacks and murders on commercial farms in the province is all confirmed. However, it is a minimum not a maximum figure. It suggests however that the “rate of attack” on farms in the province was, at least, around seven times higher than the rate of attack on households in the province.
In conclusion then, the Institute based its analysis on some questionable assumptions and – more critically – highly incomplete data on the number of farm attacks. Simply correcting for the latter would effectively debunk the conclusions of its analysis. As the SAPS no longer publish data on farm attacks it is not possible to do a proper comparison between the rate of farm attacks and the rate of household robberies in 2011. It is clear however from both the historic data and the limited current data that farmers have been, and still are, uniquely vulnerable to armed and often murderous attack. – James Myburgh
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