Ramaphosa Rejects Claim Farm Killings Are Orchestrated
Ramaphosa Rejects Claim Farm Killings Are Orchestrated
South African President Cyril Ramaphosa said a spate of killings in rural areas were acts of criminality and rejected the notion that an orchestrated campaign is being waged to drive white farmers from their land.
“Contrary to the irresponsible claims of some lobby groups, killings on farms are not ethnic cleansing. They are not genocidal,” Ramaphosa said in his weekly newsletter on Monday. “Numerous studies show that crime in farming communities is largely opportunistic. Rural communities are more vulnerable because of their isolated location.”
Ramaphosa’s comments follow the murder of farm manager Brendin Horner in the central Free State province last week. The killing prompted a group of White farmers to storm a police station in the town of Senekal in search of a Black suspect who’d been arrested, serving a stark reminder of the racial tensions that persist in rural South Africa more than a quarter century after the end of White-minority rule.
Farmers’ lobby groups have long complained that their members are disproportionately targeted by violent crime and allege there may be a political agenda behind the attacks. U.S. President Donald Trump weighed in in 2018, saying he asked U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo to study land and farm seizures and expropriation in South Africa, and the “large-scale killing of farmers.”
While the government has decried racial disparities in land ownership and has said it’s considering changing the constitution to make it easier for it to take land without paying for it, there haven’t been any state-sanctioned land seizures so far.
Police statistics show there were 21,325 murders in the 12 months through March, an average of 58 a day, with 49 killings on farms over the period.
Anger over Horner’s killing is justified, but vigilantism is not, according to Ramaphosa.
“While crime affects everyone, the majority of victims of violent crime are black and poor and it is young black men and women who are at a disproportionately greater risk of being murdered,” he said. “What happened in Senekal shows just how easily the tinderbox of race hatred can be ignited. As a nation we must resist any attempts to use crime on farms to mobilize communities along racial lines.”
The Afrikanerbond, a lobby group for the country’s White, Afrikaans-speaking minority, criticized Ramaphosa for reducing outrage over the killing of farmers to a racial issue. Black and White people protested against Horner’s murder and while the violence perpetuated by a few who took part couldn’t be justified, it reflected the deep frustration at the authorities# inability to tackle the violence, it said in a statement.
©2020 Bloomberg L.P.