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Time for a national indaba?
Maybe the time has arrived to seek common ground between stakeholders in South African agriculture via a national indaba to effectively deal with what has become a truly national crisis: the pandemic of farm attacks that is seeing the numbers of the country’s 40 000 commercial farmers, responsible for feeding a population of 50 million, fast depleting. At present government and organised agriculture have adversarial perceptions on the causes of, and solutions to the crisis.
This is the first of a three-part series of articles on the phenomenon of farm attacks, to try and stimulate rational debate on the issue that is threatening the country’s and a wider region’s food security.
The perceptions
Perhaps it is important to note upfront that farmers are not the only targets in SA society -- together with the South African Police Service -- that has been under constant threat the past 17 years since the dawn of the new constitutional dispensation. Crime, and the often violent nature of it, has become a serious national problem. Farmers have, however proved to be a particularly vulnerable group.
The recent third farm attack in the same week in the Western Cape saw Carl Opperman, the president of Agri Western Cape, and Dr Dirk Hermann, chief executive of Solidarity in frustration accusing government of helping to create a climate conducive to farm murders.
According to Hermann, 2300 South African farmers have been murdered in the past 20 years.
Government role-players often attribute the high incidence of farm attacks to labour disputes between farmers and workers. The contention that labour disputes are a major threat, is however disputed by other stakeholders.
According to Hermann, only 1.25% of the attacks can be attributed to poor labour relationships between farmers and workers.
A few years ago, Kallie Kriel of AfriForum accused politicians, including the minister of agriculture at the time Lulu Xingwana and her deputy Dirk du Toit, of inciting hatred against farmers, saying "Those who inflame hate and aggression towards farmers have to be regarded as accomplices to the murders of farmers."
In particular, Kriel condemned claims that violence against farm workers by farmers was endemic.
Kriel also highlighted a court case in which ANC MP Patrick Chauke publicly blamed the white community for murders and at which ANC demonstrators displayed slogans such as "One settler, one bullet!", "Kill the Boer, kill the farmer!" and "Maak dood die wit man" (Kill the white man).
Simple theft could not be used to explain the full motive of the attacks as it was not necessary to torture or murder victims in order to rob them.
Dr Hermann told Leadership Online Bulletin there is no proof that there is a direct correlation between the “Kill the boer, kill the farmer” song and any murders. “The problem is however that these songs create a climate in which murders of farmers become justifiable”.
Julius Malema sang that farmers should be shot, because the dogs are rapists. Farmers are consequently dehumanised, which makes it easier for the attackers to torture and murder.
What are the real motives?
Kerwin Lebone said in a report by a committee of inquiry into farm attacks released by the police in 2003: "Out of 3 000 attacks from 1998 to 2001 motives were found in 2 644 attacks in that period. Two percent were shown to have a racial or political motive, in 89% the motive was robbery, in 7% intimidation and in 1,6% there were labour related motives.”
Johan Burger, researcher of the crime and justice programme at the Institute of Security Studies, added: "All research so far shows that far more than 90% of farm attacks can be attributed to simple crime -- robbery is the main motive.”
But not all stakeholders are equally positive about the fact that farm murders are highlighted at what they regard to be the expense of other vulnerable targets.
Human Rights Watch criticised the government for placing too much emphasis on protecting farmers, at the expense of protecting farm workers from abuse by farm owners. They suggest that "farm attacks" are given a disproportionately high media and political focus.
"Murders on farms (of owners, or of workers by owners) are given an individual attention that many other killings are not,” they said.
In August 2011, Hermann and major-general Chris van Zyl authored the book “Land of Sorrow – 20 years of farm murders in South Africa,” which describes some 1363 murders in graphic detail on SA farms. The purpose of the book is to mobilise the media, the South African public and the international community against these atrocities.
The international campaign was launched at the end of November at a United Nations conference in Switzerland, where copies of the book were handed to representatives of all the international embassies in South Africa.
AgriSA, the South African Agricultural Union, recorded 1 541 murders and 10 151 attacks in the period from 1994 to 2008 , an average of 0,3 murders a day.
The Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU) recorded 1 266 murders and 2070 attacks in the period from 1991 to 2009 -- an average of 0.2 murders a day.
The Institute for Security Studies of the University of Pretoria, using statistics provided by TAU in June last year, reported 1 073 murders and 1 813 attacks in the period from 1993 to 2009 -- an average of 0,2 murders a day.
Opperman told Rapport newspaper that he blamed the government for the farm murders. It is because the government creates the environment in which criminals when they have no money can roam freely and attack innocent people, he says.
Hermann says South Africa needs a national indaba and a national plan to stop farm murders. As long as a climate is created by some political role-players that promotes a perception that farmers deserve to be tortured to death with plastic and a hot iron, there will definitely be no solution to this problem that has taken on the proportions of a national crisis.
(In the next edition: “Addressing the climate that might impact on farm attacks.”)
