Farm attacks: from bread basket to basket case

The brutal murder of young Free State farm manager Brendin Horner has, understandably, brought tempers to boiling point in the farming community, which finds itself under siege by criminal attackers.

Anger flared yesterday as Horner’s alleged killers were brought to court in the Free State farming town of Senekal and as hundreds of people from around the country gathered to express their outrage. Horner’s murder was exceptionally callous: he was tortured and stabbed before being hung from a fence pole.

This sort of heinous violence speaks to something more than just mere crime. As we report today, the ongoing onslaught against farmers and others in rural communities poses a serious long-term threat not only to the security of the country, but also to our economy.

As the death toll among farmers continues to grow, experts are warning that farming as a career is becoming more dangerous than one in law and order. There is a fear that younger generations will see the profession as far too risky. Without new people entering the industry and if the attacks continue, then organised agriculture will start to decline and South Africa’s food security will be at risk.

Farmers and their supporters are correct to be angry that the government apparently does not consider farm attacks and murders to be a law enforcement priority. There is little real evidence to support extremist views that there is a concerted “genocide” against specifically white farmers – but farmers are being attacked at an alarming rate, no matter whose statistics you believe.

Because the government and the police have had little success in tackling the problem – and, in the cases of many rural police stations show little inclination to properly investigate farm attacks – farming communities are organising to defend themselves.

This can have positive and negative consequences: people who know their area and its people can be far more effective in identifying criminal outsiders; but organised, armed groups driven by anger and emotion can quickly descend into vigilantism. There was evidence of this yesterday in the attacks on journalists trying to cover the events at Senekal – ironic, because many in the affected communities claim their plight is being ignored by the “mainstream media”.

Are you any better than a farm attacker when you assault a female photographer and reporter from The Citizen? Even as you protest about violence, you commit a reprehensible act of gender-based violence… The attack on our journalists, we know, does not reflect the responsible, correct attitude of most people in and around the farming community – members of whom welcomed another of our teams with open arms to share their suffering and anxiety.

Organised groups are standing up for farmers but are also proposing solutions which can stand our whole country in good stead – as opposed to indulging in cowardly violence against those who merely want to tell the story, without fear or favour.

We will continue to cover the farming community and the violence and crime perpetrated against it because we share the belief that without a strong agricultural foundation, our country can easily go from being a bread basket to a basket case, as has happened elsewhere in Africa.

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