A farmer’s view: Opportunism may be a bigger problem than ‘farm murders’ (free to read)

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The attack on the Senekal Magistrate’s Court gives rise to a new layer of concern regarding the highly emotional developments around what are now simply called ‘farm attacks’.

White farmers have protested killings and myriad lesser injustices in the past, but sedition (some might even argue treason given that it was a court) has hardly been a concern.

Indeed the jump to include the one pillar of government that has appeared not to falter is extraordinary.

This escalation comes at a time where a series of brutal murders has been perpetrated upon white farmers and the term “farm murders” has taken on an a strong ideological undertone in the minds of many.

There is an “us and them” aspect in the response to the news when it breaks.

In the area where I farm, I receive of late, almost daily messages on our security group informing us of attacks on farmers and their families all around the country.

Most of these incidents pose no immediate threat to me, nor could I assist in any way.

It is as if it is important simply that I know, that I understand, that because I am white and work the land, I am imperiled by a “coordinated” threat.

A healthy debate around the term “farm murders” and what it actually means is off the table in this area.

Although it is not my lived experience, there is perhaps some truth that I face a new threat.

The threat of opportunism.

The threat created when people unite around a common cause that is poorly understood and therefore very easily manipulated.

Something emboldened those white men to attack a Magistrate’s Court – an act that requires supreme confidence in both cause and action.

Removing your woman and children beforehand not only reveals your resolve for a violent outcome, but, when preceded by prayer to an all knowing and just God, reveals an unshakeable belief that you are on the side of right.

Provoking the State to exercise its monopoly on violence is no small escalation.

These actions and beliefs are echoed by the opportunists on the other side of the political spectrum, where those in unsullied red overalls quickly condemn the actions of those white men and call for swift action to be taken by the authorities they themselves regularly defy.

Action against the very acts they themselves have encouraged and partaken in.

But the greatest opportunists are those who have mastered the “misopportunity”.

Government itself has intentionally mishandled the reconciliation between the landed and the landless since the beginning.

This status quo suits those in power at every level.

To be awarded the help needed by state entities in order to become a commercially successful farmer in a rural area, there is a price to be paid. What genuinely newly empowered person can afford to lavish bribes on the bureaucrats and politicians?

So long as the narrative can pit one unhinged, but genuinely aggrieved party on the right, against an equally unhinged but aggrieved party on the left, the maliciously incompetent status quo seems like a reasonable option.

It has become an all too familiar irony that those who provide no leadership at all, end up in positions of leadership.

Attacking a Magistrate’s Court will no sooner resolve a problem than burning down a school.

Unless each individual chooses to rethink their position and how they came to hold it, we will be doomed to repeat our own mistakes to the benefit of those who know them.

Blacklow is a commercial farmer in the North West province.

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