Political experts full of praise for Ramaphosa’s stance on farm murders

Political experts have praised President Cyril Ramaphosa’s condemnation of farm killings and his highlighting of the regular violent crime against black people.

Political analysts Dr Ralph Mathekga and Dr Somadoda Fikeni believed Ramaphosa did a great balancing act amid the outcry over the violence that affected both the farming communities and poor black people who had been murdered. Fikeni said few would criticise the president for being silent on the farm killings after his latest statement, in which he also championed the fight against gender-based violence .

“I think that the tone taken by the president on this is a very good one because the farm killing could be easily hijacked by extremists with a political agenda.

“It’s good that the president acknowledge it but also placed it within the context of the broader violence in this country. This should not be used as a political football because it is potential quite divisive in our society.”

Mathekga praised Ramaphosa for taking a balanced tone on this matter by talking to the violence that affected farmers and the black people. Fikeni said Ramaphosa’s statement, in which the focus on the killing of a young Free State farm manager, Brendin Horner, was an attempt to balance things against the massive pressure from all sides over the lack of state action against both farm attacks and murders that occurred in the poor black communities.

Ramaphosa described Horner’s murder as an “appalling act of cruelty” and that “his killing should anger and upset every one of us”. In the same breath, he said while crime affected everyone, the majority of victims of violent crime were black and poor, and “it is young black men and women who are at a disproportionately greater risk of being murdered”.

Fikeni said Ramaphosa’s statement was important for the country because farm killings – as well as violence against black people – were emotional issues on both sides. He can’t be silent on violent crime otherwise he was the one who got blamed when police failed to act.

If he spoke out only on farm killings, he would have been accused of prioritising them at the expense of black victims of crime when crime affected everybody.

“I think he was trying to balance things here. I doubt that anyone would be able to blame the President because he met the leaders of gender-based violence and even set funds aside to fight this problem,” Fikeni said.

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