South Africa is collapsing.

But there is a hope.

A new nation is emerging in the Cape area among the ruins. You will read about this emerging nation at the conclusion of this post.

• Peet was tortured for five hours Friday night. Eventually one of his attackers ended his life by stabbing him to death.

The victim was 55 years old.

Peet van Es was a migrant from The Netherlands. Why the Dutchman chose South Africa was not disclosed by the local media.

Apparently the victim was enjoying a quiet evening at home with his wife and a visiting friend on a farm near Barberton.

The identities of the five black males who broke into the farmhouse were obscured by the ninja-style balaclavas they wore. The invaders demanded the occupants direct them to the farm safe. The three victims were bound — hands and legs — with speaker wire found in the house.

Apparently there was no safe. The thugs made off with jewelry Peet’s wife was wearing. They also stole the couple’s car.

• Epidemic

White Afrikaans have a name for such horrific farm murders: plaasmoorde. To understand the severity of this epidemic, one need only to Google the search term “South Africa farm murders”, then click on “images”.

In 2016 there were more than 300 farm murders in South Africa. 64 farmers or family members were killed. That’s more than one per week.

There are about 35,000 farms in South Africa, down from nearly 100,000 just 15 years ago. About 19,000 of the remaining farms are for sale.

The reason for the decline? Farming in South Africa is simply too dangerous.

Dailysabah.com claims that 1,141 farm murders have been committed since 1990.

Let put that in perspective: 64 of South Africa’s 35,000 farms experienced deadly attacks in 2016. That’s about 0.18 percent. Had America’s 2.2 million farms be victimized at the same rate, there would have been 3,960 farm murders in our nation last year; or about 76 per week. That, by any measure, constitutes an epidemic.

Extrapolated over a 30-year anticipated career span for farmers; about 1 in 18 of South Africa’s farmers — or a family member — can expect to be murdered. Considering the number of farm murders increases annually, the chances of being murdered is also increasing.

The problem is compounded by that fact that only 60 of the 1,141 victims of farm murders were black. That is, about 95 percent of farm-attack victims are white in a nation where only about 8.5 percent of the total population is white. Nearly all the known attackers were black.

Granted, farming is dominated by whites. Black Africans seem to have no interest or aptitude for farming. Even when land is given them by the government, few black farmers succeed.

Prior to the end of Apartheid, South Africa’s white farmers not only fed their nation, but served as the bread basket for sub-Saharan Africa. Today, the nation is forced to import food.

It’s getting worse.

• Land grab

In February, South Africa’s president Jacob Zuma announced plans to expedite the expropriation of land from whites without compensation. Land would be “given back” to blacks. The scheme smacks of corruption and will be modeled, according to Zuma, after a similar land redistribution “reform” committed by Zimbabwe’s president Robert Mugabe. That land grab sent Zimbabwe’s country into a crash-and-burn tail spin. Virtually everyone suffered except for Mugabe and his cronies.

Zuma’s plan is missing one essential component: Most of South Africa’s farm land cannot be given “back to blacks” because sub-Saharan black Africans didn’t inhabit the Cape area when the Dutch arrived in the 17th century. What’s more, land appropriated by white settlers from blacks in northern regions was not stolen, but was purchased or obtained through mutual agreements.

Dutch and, later, English settlers transformed South Africa’s undeveloped landscape into an economic powerhouse. The subsequent wealth attracted hordes of sub-Saharan Africans. Many of the new arrivals were welcomed by white South Africans as cheap labor.

Suffice it to say that virtually every sub-Saharan African in the region is either a migrant or the descendant of a migrant who arrived in relatively recent years to partake in the wealth created by European descendants.

Aside from hunters-gatherers, the mineral and agricultural wealth of South Africa went virtually untouched for nearly 60,000 years. Only in recent generations has the region blossomed from loin cloths and mud huts into a massive technological infrastructure.

That infrastructure is being eroded by unchecked farm attacks and the corruption of president Zuma’s African National Congress (ANC) political party.

• There is hope

Apart from the ANC and its smaller clone, Democratic Alliance (DA), a new political party is emerging. The Cape Party is seeking a referendum that would create a new nation of the Western Cape province that would free its people from the insanity of South Africa’s sky-rocketing crime, tanking economy, and political corruption.

The new party’s president, Jack Miller, says his new nation will embrace the free-market economy of Singapore while adopting the direct democracy political model that has served Switzerland since 1891.

Refer to capeparty.com for more information.

photo credit: By Johnnyhurst – Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33357596

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