NOT ONLY WHITE FARMERS ARE ATTACKED AND MURDERED !!!

No matter how hard I try, I cannot seem to swim in the popular streams. I invariably end up swimming against the tide.

I am white and therefore expected to support and swim with the tide of the inhumane and countless farm attacks and murders, as well as belonging to groups on social media such as stopwhitegenocide in SA. While this phenomenon hardly gets a mention in the newspapers, magazines and television for lack of media space which is filled to overflowing with stories of corruption and ineptitude of the ANC government, or it is about which political party is taking which political party to court. Quite frankly, a journalist these days only has to sit in parliament or tag along with the Hawks, and they will be able to file their copy for the day. Farm attacks and murders go ignored by the main stream media as well as by the government MP’s. The SAPS also don’t seem to make sufficient distinction between murders in general and farm murders. This is where social media is unparalleled in getting the news out to the world as to what is happening to mainly white South Africans.

By joining various social media sites, I thought I knew more than enough about farm attacks and murders. However, when I noticed that one particularly well-supported Facebook group started describing one group of people as savages, I became feeling uncomfortable with the language they were using. No amount of Genocide Watch reports and YouTube Videos, or Save White Farmer or Boere/Farmer groups is going to change the minds and hearts of people to do something positive in finding a solution for this problem. All that is spoken about is the problem, but there is no vision and no method on how to alleviate the problem. There is no solution to work towards.

There are two reasons why I find myself swimming alone and in the other direction. These are:

Losing the high moral ground by describing black people as savages. If the objective is to get the world to listen, understand and hopefully do something about the murder of farmers, much of this will fall on deaf ears, because of the language is used and the biased views of the articles.

The second reason is that not all farm attack victims and farm murder victims are white. There is almost complete absence of the black murders that take place at the same time. Do they not suffer the same type of treatment at the hands of the criminals? Social media reports lack authenticity because of racial bias in their reporting on farm murders and attacks.

Having said this, there is most definitely a serious problem with the unprecedented and remarkably high, exceptionally violent attacks, torture and murder committed against farmers in this country. The occupation of farming places the farmers in the number one spot on the most number of murders per 100 000. Conservatively, the number is 133/100 000. It is conservative because not all farm attacks are reported. The second highest most dangerous occupation in South Africa is that of a policeman or policewoman with a reported number of 53/100 000.

When I saw a book on the subject, written by Carla van der Spuy, Farm Murders: Victims tell their stories, I had to read it. Carla van der Spuy tells the victim’s stories by interviewing them. Personally, I found her style of questioning and her responses lacked empathy and compassion and in some cases, the questions asked were ridiculous in the extreme. One such example is when a victim describes the paramedics being unable to find a vein to put up a drip. Carla asks the victim if they had put the lights on. The victim replied that the lights were on and the paramedics were also using high powered torches, but still had difficulty in obtaining a vein to use. Carla again asks, “Why is that?” The farmer responds, “I don’t know…maybe from shock?” I found that type of interviewing style extremely naïve.

The extreme violence and torture of the people during an attack is correctly portrayed, without exaggeration, by the various social network groups. What was significantly obvious as well, was that the victims that were interviewed were almost exclusively white. The vicious and brutal nature of these crimes cannot be explained away using the motive of theft. The offenders spend a lot of time with the victims and use various methods of torture, including burning them with irons, dragging them behind vehicles, pouring scalding water over them, rape and senseless beating and kicking of the victims, even when they have been rendered incapable of standing up, let alone defending themselves.

In every farm attack, the victims are asked for the keys to the safe. Money kept in a safe is secondary to the reason they want the safes opened. The criminals want the weapons that are in the safe. Our laws that stipulate that guns are to be kept in a safe when not on the person who is licenced to carry it, contributes to the reason the criminals ask for and then torture the victim until the safe is opened. Opening a safe does not however, guarantee you your life. Often the criminals will kill their victims so that they cannot be identified. However, the rape and/or killing of small children can serve no purpose to the criminals. This is just pure and unadulterated hate that results from envy of something or the feeling that the victim owes the criminal. This again is fermented by the government and the laws which are being pushed through legislation to expropriate land and give it back to the “rightful owners”. Politicians riding on the “give us back our land”, is a case in point. Much has been written about and debated on who the “rightful owner” of the land is, so I will not go into that aspect here.

Another reason that farmers are more at risk of attack is because they are isolated. The criminals know that they can take their time, even if an alarm is raised, before the police or help arrives.

Whether these farm attacks are orchestrated or approved of by the state or whether it is criminals jumping in on the band wagon of “give us back our land” and “one bullet one settler” or whether it is a combination of the two, I am not sure. Many of our population between the ages 35 and 50 are uneducated due to the burning of the schools – these people are the most dangerous because they have nothing and therefore they have nothing to lose by taking what they want through criminal behaviour. They have been brought up in a violent society, and therefore many have identified with violence as opposed to non-violent negotiating.

A few interesting facts arose from Carla van der Spuy’s book. I will list them here for easy reading:

SAcan is a non-profit, multi-cultural organisation started in 2003 by Brian Jones, an ex-policeman after his colleague was murdered. He and a victim of a brutal farm attack have signed up approximately 11600 members and have an extensive data base with more than 33 000 names of contactable people. Many of these are policemen, ranging from constables to generals.

Their response time is often faster than the police and because of their contacts; the police and various departments of the police force are on the scene in a much shorter period of time than if SAcan were not involved.

One victim said, “If you’ve never been a victim of crime, you probably won’t feel motivated to do something about it”.

In July 2010, Brian Jones, founder of SAcan had an epiphany. All along he had been motivated by the murder of his colleague. However, on the 21^st of that month, he was called to the scene of a farm attack. “…I didn’t know the Karg family. Neither did I know the Linyane and Mholngo families. Nor did I know that the murder of a white woman, a Zulu, and a Zimbabwean (my italics) would cause me to ask myself whether I’d been living in a dream…to lead me in a new direction”.

The statistics of the Transvaal Agricultural Union/TAU SA show the combined figures related to farm attacks and murders for each province between the period of 1990 and 2014. During this period 1025 white farmers were murdered and 72 black farmers were murdered. The spouse and direct family of the white farmer who were murdered were 432 while there were 33 spouse and direct family murders of a black farmer. This stands to reason that there would be less black farmers killed than white farmers, because the population from which they come are skewed in this direction.

The total number of white farm workers killed during the same period is 12, while the total number of black farm workers killed is 115.

On one farm where the farmer was killed, the wife decided to leave the farm and 700 workers had no jobs. This means that not only are we looking at the death of farmers, but also that as a result of farm attacks and murders, the unemployment also increases.

Many of our farmers have given up farming in South Africa due to the number of farm attacks and are farming in Zambia and Mozambique. With fewer farmers, our food becomes more expensive because we have to import food instead of us providing for ourselves.

My conclusion is that our farm attacks are a result of a complex group of causes; from unemployed and uneducated youth who are brainwashed into thinking that the white man has stolen from him and therefore deserves to be punished (tortured and killed), black farmers being targeted because they will be seen to be aiding and abetting with white people, to serving the agendas of certain political parties where divide and rule is the name of the game, might be state sanctioned (although that would be secret), farmers are easier prey than people in towns, our police force is under duress because of incompetence, corruption and inadequate training and resources (they often do not even have vehicles to send out) and the government has disbanded the Commando's.

The problem of farm murders is far more complex than the popular phrase of “White South African Genocide”. Black farmers and workers are also victims of farm attacks and murders.