Futile standoff in Senekal

On the eve of SA’s first democratic election the then president of the Bophutatswana homeland, Lucas Mangope, declared they would not be part of the country’s election, effectively declaring a secession from SA.

Some hastily convened Afrikaner extremist commandos offered their services to help defend the homeland from both the SA army and locals who were protesting against Mangope and his government. It ended in tears for the most prominent of the extremist organisations, the AWB, when three of its members were executed by a Bophuthatswana Defence Force member in front of cameras.

And the cause they were fighting for? What became of it? Nothing. It became a footnote in South Africa’s history of transition to democracy. The standoff between Afrikaner farmers (under the auspices of AfriForum) and the EFF in the Free State town of Senekal had all the hallmarks of the Bophuthatswana standoff.

Two extremist groups, one to the far right and one to the far left were getting into a potentially deadly standoff which would achieve very little.

AfriForum’s hijacking of the murder of farm manager Brendin Horner to elevate their campaign against what they label as farm murders has resulted in heightened emotions that saw the storming of a court building, the destruction of state property and the arrests of a few of their members who did all they could to get to the suspects who were appearing in court.

Besides some farmers brandishing their oversized guns, their side accomplished very little. In fact, what they did was provide the EFF with a perfect opportunity to add its might to the creation of a racial tinderbox not too dissimilar to the one the AWB created in Bophuthatswana in 1994.

Julius Malema and the EFF have suffered the lack of media coverage during the Covid-19 lockdown and the Clicks hair issue provided it with a perfect gift to take it out of obscurity back into the headlines. What they didn’t expect was that soon thereafter, another gift would come, nicely wrapped courtesy of AfriForum, for them to stay in the media spotlight.

If an armed fight had actually broken out in Senekal, logic dictates that the armed farmers would have won in the body count stake in a war they are never going to win. Brendin Horner’s murder is sadly one of 21,000 that will be committed in South Africa in 2020, maybe slightly less this year because of the lockdown.

Within the broader murder statistics there are possibly subcategories of murders that possibly need specialised attention, like those of women and children. There is no distinction between white women and children and black women and children because crime and murder are opportunistic acts.

More than anything, the perpetrator aims to get financial gain from their murderous act, whether it’s that of a white farmer in Senekal or a black woman in Langa Township. It is easy for a body like AfriForum to racialise the statistics to suit its agenda but in the process, it polarises communities.

Every sober-minded South African must mourn the death of Horner, whether he’s white or not. If AfriForum focused its energies on useful strategies that help in getting the overall murder rate down, they wouldn’t create situations that opportunist leaders on the left can hijack to preach martyrdom in a situation where war is not even a possibility. 1994 has passed, civil war was averted then, neither AfriForum, nor the EFF, want to be footnotes in the history of a futile battle like the AWB.

For more news your way, download The Citizen’s app for iOS and Android.