Farm murders: The most severe form of discrimination imaginable

The South African Government’s attitude towards farm murders is the most severe form of discrimination imaginable and even though the Department of Police is the biggest scapegoat, the problem however lies much deeper than that.

AfriForum and other organisations have tried various times to discuss the spurt of farm murders and potential solutions to them with the Minister of Police. Every time it falls on deaf ears. This silence is not a surprise, considering what the police have said in the few times that they did express themselves about this crisis.

“Publicity stunts” and “attention seekers”

In 2012, AfriForum and victims who have lost their loved ones in farm murders walked to the office of the then Minister of Police, Nathi Mthethwa, to hand him a memorandum to prioritise farm murders. The Minister refused to accept the memorandum (see video here).

Shortly thereafter, the Spokesperson for the Minister told the media that farmers are not the “golden boys and girls” and that they do not have any rights for special treatment. In 2013, Belinda van Noord delivered an entire collection of letters at the Minister’s office. In this collection, victims ask for the prioritisation of farm murders. Belinda’s father and brother were killed on their farm near Brits a month before that. Before the collection of letters could even reach the Minister’s office, his Spokesperson released a media statement, saying that this action, in his opinion, was just a publicity stunt. The Minister further said that AfriForum and the victims of murdered loved ones are attention seekers. He went even further and said that these efforts to try and communicate with him (in his opinion) are boycotting the fight against crime and suggested that Government has better things to do with its time than to pay attention to this.

Farm murders deprioritised

A further irony is that Government previously did perceive farm murders as a priority. In the late 1990s, Government released an official statement that farm murders are exceptionally inhumane and that immediate action needs to be taken to stop it. Government started a commission of inquiry and even set up a priority committee within the South African Police Service (SAPS) with the intent purpose of investigating farm murders.

In 2003, however, Government changed its attitude. Against all expectations, President Mbeki announced that the commando’s, an organisation where members of the local community can become involved in order to ensure their safety, had to be abolished. He did not offer any reasons besides that it is not part of Government’s policy and vision. At that stage, official statistics concerning farm murders and attacks were still released.

In 2007, farm murders suddenly rose with 25% from the previous year. Shortly after the release of this statistic, Government decided and announced that no more statistics will be released on farm murders and attacks.

The figures today

In the absence of Government statistics, the onus lies on civil organisations to draw up these statistics. The agricultural union, TLU SA, has been busy with this for a while now and AfriForum recently started doing it as well. In 2014, these two organisations reached an agreement to continuously share their data with each other to ensure that these two organisations do not contradict each other and that the figures are as complete as possible. This data comes from information provided by members of AfriForum and TLU SA as well as hints from social media and news reports. All data needs to be verified before it can be placed on the list. Reliable media sources are seen as verified data, while hints on social media and information from the public are verified by contacting family or following up with the local police.

We therefore only work with verified data and the figures used by AfriForum and/or TLU SA should be considered as the absolute minimum, rather than the complete figures. According to this data at the time of this article, there were 1 747 farm murders in the last 20 years. These numbers can be represented as follows:
Farm murders: January 1990 – June 2015

Farmer Direct family Worker Visitor TOTAL
1 133 465 130 19 1747
* Source: TLU SA

Calculations by the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) show that the ratio at which South Africa’s commercial farmers are being murdered, can be relayed to 138 per 100 000 per year. The world average is about 7 per 100 000 per year and the general murder statistic in South Africa is 32 per 100 000 per year. In 2011, Government held a national summit talk to set up a focused counter strategy to reduce the murders on police officials. At that stage, the murder figures on police officials were 55 per 100 000 per year. These numbers clearly indicate that the probability of a South African farmer to be murdered is twice as high as that of a South African police official.

Why Government does not want to prioritise farm murders

In the absence of an official Government viewpoint, we have to focus on commentary in the media to try and establish what Government’s stand is. In the first place, it is important to mention that Government does not talk to the media about this. They do, however, comment when they don’t have any other option, such as when a journalist confronts them during a media conference or when the South African Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) forces them to comment.

The argument they normally repeat (as shown above) is that farmers, according to Government, are not special and therefore they do not need special treatment. According to Government’s argument, there is no sense in prioritising farm murders, because murder already is a crime. A person cannot prioritise one phenomenon of crime above another phenomenon of crime. That would be discrimination against non-farmers who are murdered. This is more or less how Government argues.
Why Government is wrong

At first glance, Government’s argument sounds logical. The problem is that it is totally stripped of reliability, because they only use this argument when confronted with farm murders and not with any other unique crime. If Government and the SAPS want this argument to be reliable, they need to use it consistently across all areas of society. The implication of this is that Government is not allowed to prioritise any crime, because almost all priority crimes are unique phenomena of more general crimes. Government has never said that rhino poaching is actually only “normal poaching” and that it would lead to discrimination against elephants and kudus should it become a priority to stop rhino poaching. No. The argument is that rhinos are targeted in an exceptional proportion and the implication of this is exceptional, and therefore an exceptional strategy needs to be set in place to stop the poaching of rhinos.
The same can be said about the theft of copper cables, handled by Government as a priority crime. The same goes for gang violence and violence against women and children. All these crimes are combatted with unique Government programmes, because it is seen as unique crime with exceptional implications. When murders on South African food producers come under the spotlight, the argument above does not count and Government insists that farm murders are not priority. This despite the fact that the National Development Plan (NDP) set a goal for farmers to create 1 million jobs by 2030.

The most severe form of discrimination imaginable

Should one have a holistic look at Government and the SAPS’ actions in general and their attitude towards farm murders specifically, then we can’t help but come to the conclusion that the lives of South African food producers are not important to Government. To be honest, it irritates them when they are asked what they are going to do about this, because the farmer’s life is not on their radar at all. What the South African Government is actually saying, is that the theft of a piece of copper, in their opinion, is much worse than the torture murder of a farmer. This is the most severe form of discrimination imaginable.
Ernst Roets
Deputy CEO
AfriForum
Twitter: @ernstroets