Compass World: How'd South Africa Land Here?
Plaasmoorde is a graveyard in South Africa commemmorating all the Afrikaners killed in farm attacks. (Wikimedia Commons)
by Thomas Menten (SFS '23)
A group of angry white farmers stormed a court while Black people were being tried for the murder of a farm manager. This was not a scene from the Jim Crow-era South; actually, it happened on Wednesday, in South Africa, a country still dealing with its racist past.
The discovery of 21-year-old Brendin Horner's tortured body, found tied to a pole, has incited a new wave of outcries by white South African farmers accusing their government of failing to protect them from violent crime.
Terre'Rouge
In South Africa, deaths like that of Mr. Horner are not unique. Between June and September, there have been 21 murders and 147 attacks on farms. There has been a long history of these attacks since the end of Apartheid in 1994. One of the most well-known case occurred in 2010, when Eugène Terre'Blanche, the racist leader of the white-supremacist Afrikaner separatist and fascist Afrikaner Resistance Movement militia, was beaten to death by a farm worker, who allegedly later announced to his coworkers, “I am your boss today.”
Eugène Terre’Blanche, former leader (now deceased) of the white-supremacist Afrikaner Resistance Movement. (Flickr)
Many white Afrikaner farmers and their lobbying groups, like AfriForum, have alleged that these crimes are a form of terror against South Africa’s white minority and are, in part, racially motivated. The government has pushed against this narrative: South African President Cyril Ramaphosa urged South Africans to “resist attempts… to mobilise communities along racial lines.”
Is It So Black And White?
While AfriForum and the Democratic Alliance (DA) have argued that these crimes are racially motivated, the government and other analysts maintain that the attacks are part of a much larger crime problem in the country. In the 12 months up to April, only 49 of the 21,325 murder victims were white farmers.There is much disagreement over the motivations behind these farm attacks. In a recent interview, Police Minister Bheki Cele said that, often, the motivation for violence is the mistreatment of Black farm employees, like in the case of Terre’Blanche’s death. Ernst Roets, Deputy CEO of AfriForum, pushed back against the minister’s comments, stating that “[n]ot all farm murders are racially motivated, but race is neither irrelevant. It is wrong to state that farm murders are per definition racially motivated. It is, however, just as wrong to try and present farm murders simply as ‘ordinary crimes’ or to state that race is in truth irrelevant.”
Ernst Roets is the deputy CEO of AfriForum, a lobbying group working on behalf of Afrikaners. (Twitter)
All parties can agree that these attacks are partially motivated by greed and opportunism. Johan Burger, researcher for The Institute of Security Studies, spoke at the South African Human Rights Commission’s national hearings on safety in farming communities in 2014, arguing that “people went to farms to steal, motivated by greed,” and, while racial insults were used during such crimes, this fact does not mean race or politics were the dominant motives of such attacks. Rural communities are far more vulnerable, due to their isolated location and lack of access to security. Analysts believe white farmers appear to be more heavily affected primarily because they have more wealth in the areas where they live. (But that itself could be an effect of racial disparities.)
There are genuine grievances over the South African government’s failure to protect farm owners and employees. But false claims of “white genocide” have nonetheless gained traction among white supremacist groups across the globe, even catching the attention of President Trump in 2018, who pledged to have his secretary of state investigate the farm attacks.
U.S. President Donald Trump perked up his hears when he heard about the killing of white farmers. His administration is widely denounced for failing to stop domestic white supremacist violence. (Twitter)
On A Razor Wire's Edge
Ramaphosa condemned the white farmers who attempted to storm the Senekal Magistrate Court to attack the two Black people suspected of being involved in Horner's murder, saying that it “opened up wounds that go back many generations.” Many, including DA leader John Steenhuisen, are disappointed by the president's failure to condemn farm attacks as strongly. In 2018, in an interview with Bloomberg Magazine, Ramaphosa infamously denied the issue, stating that there are “no killings of… white farmers in South Africa.” Steenhuisen, in reaction to the most recent Afrikan death, said “President Ramaphosa should call for peace to prevail and make it clear that violence will not be tolerated.”
In the eyes of the DA, those who use the farm attacks to incite further violence include the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), a political party founded by Julius Malema in 2013.
With white South African farmers gathered outside the Senekal Magistrate Court to protest Horner’s death, the EFF staged a counter-protest. Malema stated to the local press “We are not scared of them. We are going to get them on Friday. We are going to face white men face to face.” Despite the lack of violence, tensions were high and, on one street, police separated the two groups with razor wire.
Juju On That Beat
Julius Malema, sometimes called Juju, founded the EFF after he was expelled from the African National Congress (ANC) in 2012. The firebrand leader’s main concern is the inequality in South Africa, including the ANC’s failure to redistribute land from the white minority to the black majority. He is unapologetic in his beliefs and statements, tweeting on Wednesday, “Magwala a chechele morago! (Cowards move to the back) Fighters attack!” in response to Tuesday’s violence.
Despite his legitimate concerns over land and wealth inequality—white South Africans own almost 70 percent of privately owned farmland while only making up 9 percent of the country's population—along with his advocacy for improving education access for the masses, Malema's populism comes with a dark side.
Juju has been quite divisive in his rhetoric about the races that inhabit South Africa. He has twice been found guilty of using hate speech, first for comments he made about a woman accusing former President Zuma of rape and, second, for singing the song “Kill the Boer,” an old ANC war song calling for the killing of the Boer “cowards” and “dogs.”
Julius "Juju" Malema really does not like white people. In his public statements, he does not seem to discourage violent action against whites in South Africa. (Wikimedia Commons)
He openly inflames racial tensions. In 2016, he stated that the EFF is “not calling for the slaughtering of white people. At least for now.” In 2018, he stated that “the majority of Indians hate Africans. The majority of Indians are racist,” referring to the Indian middle class in the country. Statements like these only serve to substantiate the claims political opponents make about his racial divisiveness.
In almost every speech Juju makes, he sings “Kill the Boer,” despite the fact that particular phrase has been banned as hate speech. Combine that with Malema’s constant urging of black South Africans to take back their land and it is easier to see why Boers may believe that political forces are encouraging the attacks on their farms.
Who's On First?
Under Apartheid in South Africa, Black people were not allowed to own property in most of the country. Laws such as the Group Areas Act and the Native Land Act severely restricted Black South Africans’ access to land and opportunity. When Nelson Mandela's ANC took power in 1994, it returned 30 percent of the land to black owners by 2000. Under Zuma’s rule, however, land distribution efforts stalled while poverty and unemployment remained high.
In this vacuum, the EFF gained traction. Through their efforts, the ANC government adopted a policy of expropriating land without compensation. As argued by ANC politician Ronald Lemola, the country cannot afford to pay white farmers market price “and anyway, historically, the land was dispossessed by violence. It's not like they paid for the land."
The Harvard International Review, considering the practicality of land expropriation, admits that an overnight shift in ownership would decimate the country’s food supply: like in Zimbabwe, newly installed Black farmers would have little agricultural expertise compared to the whites they replace, in part due to Apartheid land policies and discrimination that locked Black people out of education and industry. Land expropriation, the Review argues, can still happen in a responsible way—but that doesn’t yet seem likely.’
A New Great Trek?
The farm attacks have created great anxiety amongst the Afrikan community, discouraging young farmers from entering the industry and pushing existing farmers out; The number of commercial farmers has decreased from around 120,000 in 1994 to 35,000 today.
Even the mere threat of land expropriation without compensation has had a dramatic effect on the market for private land. Boers find their plots worthless. Land auctions cannot find interested buyers due to the uncertainty of government expropriation. While Ramaphosa stated that violent crime on farms “poses not just a threat to the safety of our rural communities, but to our nation’s food security,” his government's policy of expropriation without compensation may do just that.
Critics warn that South Africa may follow in the footsteps of Zimbabwe, where violent land seizures from white farmers scared away investors and helped cause the economic collapse of a once-prosperous country. U.S. officials have even weighed-in on the topic, with Secretary of State Pompeo asserting that South Africa’s plan would be “disastrous” for the country's economy and its people.
In the face of high crime and unemployment, farm attacks, and a stagnant economy, some white South Africans are looking for a chance to leave South Africa for countries such as Australia. Between 2002 and 2017, there has been net loss of about 62,000 white South Africans. Farmers such as Jo-an Engelbrecht, whose parents were murdered in a farm attack in 2018, hope that things will change for the better in the country. If things stay the way they are, "there's no future” in South Africa for them.
And what about the non-white South Africans, who comprise 79 percent of the country’s population? Overall GDP growth is low, and unemployment stands at 42 percent. If things stay the way they are, the future doesn’t look too good for them, either.