Carefully made on a hillside at Pietersburg there is a cross of many white crosses. It is a memorial to the Afrikaner lives lost to black violence in rural South Africa since 1991.
In those fourteen years there have been more than 20,000 armed attacks perpetrated by groups of militant, young African males on South African commercial farms, mostly run by white Afrikaners of course. The SA farm murder toll now stands at 1,782 since the end of apartheid. But this is a crisis that the international media all but ignore. You will, for example, wait till you drop for any hint of it from CNN.
So, why do we hear so little about the real South African situation these days? To me, it seems that only those issues which appeal to the popular imagination reach the presses. The corruption of the black ANC mafia, filling its pockets under the pretext of “Black Economic Empowerment”, has been in the news. So, too, has the never-ending search for riches of less lucky blacks eager, perhaps, to follow a bad example. And we hear about AIDS, of course, and the ANC medical quacks’ capriole cures – which confirm all our suspicions of black competence.
Corruption, violent crime, AIDS and incompetence, it seems, are images of South Africa which we have grown used to and expect to have reinforced. Generally, though, even if much of the early idealism and the global wave of goodwill that accompanied the birth of modern South Africa has been dented by the realities of black power, the rainbow nation still elicits a kind of hope from the West. All that talk about truth and reconciliation, all the saint-worship of Nelson Mandela has to have been for something, surely. The notion that it might not … even that post-apartheid South Africa might treat its Boer minority far worse than ever the old National Party governments treated blacks is simply not fit for the liberal West to contemplate. Besides, the Boer is not a picturesque victim, not a figure of sympathy.
You think I exaggerate, perhaps? Try googling “Boer farm murders”. You will get the picture.
So … what are the facts about the Boer genocide, the plaasmoorde in Afrikaans … the farm murders? A good introduction is the film, “Bloody Harvest”. In fact, this link provides only the first quarter of an hour of the whole film. Lady Adriana Stuijt, who you can mail at ajstuijt@hotmail.com, will send the complete film on DVD from her Netherlands base. But she needs you to make a donation to the Foundation for Afrikaner Asylum-seekers International (and give her your postal address with the email).
What official statistics do exist about the farm murders? Scroll down this page. But … retain your scepticism. There is something puzzling here. In recent years the number of the farm attacks has slightly diminished (with 14%) according to these police statistics. But the number of murders involved has mysteriously gone missing. How could this be explained? An acquaintance of mine from SA’s Northwest Province (I can’t disclose further details than that) explained it to me as follows:-
It is the SA government censors. They forbid the South African police (SAPS) from giving crime statistics to the public without the government’s consent. It is also forbidden for the media to report crime that is not first approved by the police’s headquarters.
It is an understatement to say that the police’s new farm attack statistics are governmentally “approved”. It’s also a pity that the only thing that really interests us, the murders, have been removed – the more so because there are reports now that farm attacks are getting more brutal than ever.
Btw, another indication that the official statistics are unreliable is that Interpol’s global murder figures for South Africa are approximately double the number of “recorded murders”. And bear in mind that the farm murder rate is FOUR times the official South African murder average. If the South African government denies a correlation of 400%, they are in urgent need of a course in statistics.
The white Boer, the Afrikaner farmer, is easily the highest at-risk group for murder on Earth … 310 in 100,000 per year actually. By comparison, in London the yearly probability of getting murdered is 3 in 100,000. The world’s foremost authority on genocide, Dr Gregory Stanton of “Genocide Watch”, has recognised the seriousness of the Boer genocide in his 2002 report.
South Africa’s blacks, and especially the ANC youth, still sing the old ANC resistance song “Kill The Boer”. In this they have their purposes. But in the wider world there has been an important shift in the meaning of that word “Boer”. In German, ein Bauer is nothing but a farmer. In the Boer War more than a century ago the word implied a fighter. And under the apartheid regime it became the generic name for the apartheid government and its apartheid army … the apartheid army that was the immediate enemy of the ANC guerrillas. Singing “Kill The Boer”, in fact, meant “kill the apartheid soldier”. However, now the Boer is once again merely a farmer and nothing more. He is a man who works hard with his hands and with few words and whose children now ponder emigrating (though that is difficult – Afrikaners are no colonials and have no mother land to which to return).
The “Kill The Boer” slogan has even been ruled as hate speech by the SA Human Rights Commission (SAHRC) because it incites people to kill Afrikaners. Yet the ANC ‘s public meetings still sing “shaya ma buru” all over South Africa. It should be noted that under the UN Genocide convention, such incitements to kill ethnic minorities by any ruling regime is also legally ruled to be genocide and could be rigorously pursued in the International Criminal Court – if the will was there to do it.
Although in most cases the purpose of the farm murders is robbery – which the South African government is always keen to emphasize – the large amount of “overkill” committed and the abounding brutality involved speaks of other, racial motives. Mr. Lukas Swart has written a book in which he explains in detail how these farm murders (plaasaanvalle in Afrikaans) are prepared and what the farmer can do to prevent greater harm (in Afrikaans). But discussing this here goes beyond the scope of my present essay.
For how long will the White farmers’ nightmare in South-Africa continue? Until the last one has gone? The answer is surely that the worst is yet to come. It may not happen till far into the future. But if and when it does, it will look much like the situation in Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe today.
Indeed, the ANC “geniuses” have now decided that the SA Commando System – a system that has proven its merits since 1715 and the Boers’ last line of defence against the South African crime syndicates will be – phased out by 2009. The South African police doesn’t have the resources to take over the job, a fact well know to the South African government. There is simply no other available explanation but that “it” fits the ANC’s land redistribution plans.
As in Zimbabwe, though, white commercial farmers produce the food for the rest of their 44 million compatriots. If those farmers are liquidated, the rest of South Africa and other parts of southern Africa will die with them. The present ANC leaders don’t want to understand this. But the Boer genocide may yet become the name attributed to the death of millions … if not by murder, then by starvation.
To fully understand the farm murder syndrome it should be placed in a larger South African context. In South Africa, a new apartheid system founded on race is being installed. South Africa has already imposed racial quotas that deny work to most young Afrikaners, whether or not they have the right diploma (albeit in Afrikaans, here is a letter of protestto President Mbeki).
Mbeki’s programme of Black Economic Empowerment, as it is called, is commonly dubbed in Afrikaans regstellende aksie (literally “rectifying action”, which we know as Affirmative Action). Thousands of ANC civil servants in South Africa intimidate and politicise private enterprises to engage blacks instead of whites (and browns, let it be said). “Progress” plans are implemented, fines and other sanctions imposed.
This is nothing less than the intentional impoverishment of the Afrikaner minority. In most cases it’s an unqualified or even illiterate black who gets the job (in Afrikaans). The only choice left open to whites is emigration or begging.
The SA government is unwilling or, perhaps, unable to understand that any society which fosters criteria other than merit will impoverish as a whole.
Afrikaner people do complain (in Afrikaans) about paying the bulk of the taxes and getting nothing in return, about the jobs advertised with exclusion formulas, about all the new system’s injustices. There have been loud complaints about Labour Minister Membathisi Mdladlana, who recently mocked their plight in parliament to amuse his colleagues. It didn’t amuse many Afrikaners, who don’t understand why, in this rainbow nation, their children must suffer in another apartheid system. Others wonder how long this new system will last … centuries perhaps? Yet others look beyond the ANC propaganda and see Black Economic Empowerment as, simply, the new ANC term for black racism.
But apart from the Afrikaner victims, does anyone else care? Does anyone else actually protest? Last year Archbishop Desmond Tutu criticised Black Economic Empowerment in South Africa, but only because it enriches such a small minority of already powerful blacks. That it also impoverishes the white minority because they are white surpasses even his legendary moral indignation. And the Afrikaner intellectuals? Most hope not to lose their own jobs. By that they effectively condone the new black apartheid system – playing, in an objective sense, the same role as the Judenräte once played under the Nazi regime.
Certainly, don’t expect demonstrations from angry Afrikaners. All those who cast doubt on Black Economic Empowerment are immediately cast down as racists. And beneath that lurks a more sinister possibility. The South African government itself suffers from a persecution complex. Earlier this month the country was engulfed in riots in the crime-ridden townships. These were strange echoes of the anti-white-apartheid riots of the 1980s. The government’s response? It called in the National Intelligence Agency to investigate whether a “secret force” was somehow orchestrating events. Absolutely no possibility that its own actions might be contributing to the restlessness of the poor can exist.
For all that, replacing the 35,000 commercial South African farmers by blacks is more complicated for the government than just imposing job quotas in industry and commerce. The farmers are landowners, you see. They have a special link with their territory.
This the authorities are doing whatever they can to undermine. In addition to the SAHRC‘s endorsement of the withdrawal of commandos from rural areas, it has banned the term (pdf) farm attacks from the SA Rural Protection Plan for being politically incorrect (see page 191). In their view there are no farm attacks, only “murders”. The link to the land is denied.
There is also the alarming fact that the South African Government is currently making an inventory of South Africa’s farmers along racial lines:-
“To enable the government to monitor the patterns of land ownership as it implements land reform, the deeds registration system would be improved to reflect nationality, race and gender of land owners.
And then in the background there has recently been legislation to make it possible for the government to expropriate assets on a summary basis – no necessity to apply in advance to a court.
The final thrust may be coming shortly from the South African Constitutional Review Joint Committee. The ANC is quietly rewriting the South African Constitution behind closed doors without giving any clue as to their intentions. This doesn’t inspire much confidence either, does it?
Slowly but surely it is becoming clear that the South African commercial farmers are enclosed in a deadly trap, as if they were insects. Yet the world stays silent and is, by that silence, complicit.
What can MR readers do? Mail the International Criminal Court at pio@icc-cpi.int, I suppose. But the chances of having any impact are surely limited. I would rather ask readers to contact their representatives in the USA, Britain and Australia; urging them to care as much for the white victims of racism in South Africa as they did for the blacks during the apartheid years. I would urge them to think about how they can save the lives which, without firm action, will certainly be lost in the future, as they have been lost in the past. I would urge them to recommend motions in parliament advising the SA government not to abolish the SA rural Commando System for purely ideological reasons.
I would urge them to make it clear to the South African government that the international community is watching them closely, and that government actions exposing the white farmers to fatal risk will be interpreted as a crime against mankind. I would urge them to be morally consistent. Tell the South African government that driving an ethnic minority into a corner is, in fact, a variant of ethnic cleansing. Then at least they won’t later be able to claim, “Wir haben es nicht gewusst”.
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