Though there has been no shortage of intellectuals willing to argue the contrary over the years, the prevalence of this type of murder (especially in rural areas) is clearly abnormal, the age profile of the murder victims (usually elderly) is abnormal, and the level of brutality often involved is abnormal. That these high levels of farm attacks and murders have been sustained for close to three decades is also abnormal. In this period there have been around 2 400 people killed and many others seriously injured and/or left psychologically scarred for life, in over 15 000 farm attacks. This is a death toll that has come to far exceed that of white farmers during the Rhodesian Bush war.
The origins of South Africa’s farm murder epidemic James Myburgh Politicsweb 20/6/2018
I have asked Secretary of State @SecPompeo to closely study the South Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of farmers. South African Government is now seizing land from white farmers.
When Afriforum took their campaign on South Africa’s farm murders to the United Nations, when bereaved farmers held their Black Monday march and when Australia’s Immigration Minister Peter Dutton made headlines around the world, those who have for two decades tried to minimise and deprecate these bestial hate crimes, found themselves on the back foot.
What is significant about Afriforum’s approach to the UN is that the ANC tried to block their submission – hardly surprising given the fact that Cyril Ramaphosa has sought to stigmatise the country’s white farmers.
Now the ANC is even more on the back foot with Donald Trump’s tweet and the publication of Ernst’ Roets’ horrifying book, Kill the Boer – Government Complicity in South Africa’s Brutal Farm Murders which analyses in detail the hate-crime farm murders which rarely occurred before 1994 and the collusive role that the African National Congress and the SAPS have played in that regard.
This is an extract from that book and it tells of the unsuccessful attempt by a little Afrikaans girl, Mieke Heunis (6) to prevent the murder of her father Johann by armed intruders in front of her and her mother, Mariandra, on 30 September 2016
They aggressively grabbed Mariandra by the arm. They told her to go with them downstairs. She refused. They were screaming at each other.
In a moment of innocence that befits a six-year-old girl, little Mieke sat down on the mattress. She raised her hand, as if to indicate to the intruders that she had something to say. They did not seem to care. Even though her first language was Afrikaans, she tried her best to address the intruders in English.
‘I’ve got money. You can take my money I have got a spaarbussie [English piggy bank]: she said. She asked them to take her money and leave her mommy alone. They were pulling at Mariandra to go downstairs with them.
Upon hearing his daughter offer to hand over her piggy bank, Johann, who had fallen off the couch by then, stood up and stumbled towards them. He was able to take two steps. By then he was unable to breathe. He was already drowning in his blood, which was also bubbling from his mouth. He looked at the attackers. ‘Please!’
At that moment, the one turned to the other. ‘Just kill him brother.’
Mariandra screamed at the top of her lungs. The man stepped towards Johann, lifting his firearm to Johann’s face. Mieke screamed: ‘No! No! No! No!’ He pulled the trigger. Johann fell face first on the floor.
They then turned to Mariandra. ‘Where are the other children?’ they asked, sticking the pistol to her head. All she could grab was a nearby pillow, which she desperately shoved between her head and the barrel of the gun. She said that they had done enough and that they should just go. ‘Just go! Just go! Just go! You can take everything. Just go!’
The two men then took the cellphones, casually strolled down the stairs, opened the lock on the front door from the inside and walked out the door.
That’s not a crime – that’s a hate crime.
As Roets notes – page 103:
Children are often impacted in the most terrible ways by farm attacks. At about 20:00 on the evening of 30 April 2012, Venessa Stafleu (34) was murdered in front of her two children, aged 3 and 5. After having witnessed the death of their mother, the children ran across the farm in the middle of the night towards the main road, they were severely traumatised by the events.
Imagine the impact on a teenager when both your parents and your grandparents are murdered in a single attack.
Here is the book’s dedication:
Two year-old Wilmien Potgieter was shot in the back of the head at point blank range in December 2010 on their Lindley farm, this while her mother’s throat was being slit on the 11th anniversary of her marriage to her murdered husband Attie who succumbed to 151 stab wounds – most caused by a pitchfork. Wilmien’s body was thrown in a box after her murder. When she was found, her blood half-filled the box. To celebrate this, their murderers left a note written in Sotho on a piece of cardboard saying “We have killed them. We are coming back” on the farm gate.
Posted false allegations on social media
That’s not just a crime, that’s a hate crime and the silence about the murder of Wilmien Pogieter and her parents was deafening from those who later tried to deprecate or downplay the Black Monday protest, or harassed the marchers, or attributed a racial antipathy to it or posted false allegations on social media about the bereaved participants displaying the old South African flag – Max du Preez and Pierre de Vos and Fikile Mbalula and Nathi Mthethwa and Marc Davies of the Huffington Post and Nickolaus Bauer of eNCA and Ranjeni Munusamy and Eusebius McKaiser and Julius Malema and Kevin Ritchie whose hate-filled column attacking the country’s white Afrikaner was an appalling example of ethnic stereotyping and an abuse of media power and influence to achieve that goal.
(Marie-Louise Antoni has written four analytical articles on Politicsweb about how ethnic antipathy and fake news in our English media have been instrumental in deliberately creating the perception of the brutal farmer stereotype and seeking to downplay the depraved evil of these murders – see here and here and here and here. See also the James Myburgh article on farm murder statistics.)
There was no comment from any of these people about the fact that on the day of the Black Monday march, 73-year-old Vryheid farmer, Bokkie Potgieter was so viciously murdered with a panga that his face was unrecognisable.
They were also silent when the blood of 87-year old Rachel de Villiers was used by her murderer to write a satanic message on the walls of the home she shared with her murdered husband, Dawid, also 87, on their Barkly East farm in October 2013.
That’s not a crime that’s a hate crime.
The primitive savagery of their murder, made headlines as far afield as China but drew no comment from the above-mentioned journalists and politicians.
They were also silent when on 15 May 2010 Johan Strydom was attacked on his farm outside Potchefstroom. He would probably have succumbed to the injuries suffered in the attack – which included a savage beating with an iron bar – but post mortem results provided in a subsequent court case showed that he was still alive when his sadistic attackers indulged themselves a little further. He was attached by a chain to his vehicle and dragged, while still alive, to what must, finally, have been a merciful death.
Johan Strydom’s liver burst, the back of his skull was crushed and there were drag marks all over his body.
“He lay with his face to the ground and there was a chain around his left ankle,” said Warrant Officer Kevin Pretorius on Thursday during the bail application of two of the three accused, Simphiwe Tueng, 19, and Soul Letsie, 21, in the Potchefstroom Magistrate’s Court.
All that was taken was his cellphone and his wallet.
That’s not just a crime, that’s a hate crime.
Sadistically cruel crimes
In 2012 Christiaan Bezuidenhout, professor of criminology at the University of Pretoria stated that the number of farm attacks in South Africa is estimated to be 700% higher than in any other country in the world and according to the Chamber of Commerce and Industry each farm murder costs the economy more than R2 million.
Kill the Boer is filled with information about such sadistically cruel, racially charged crimes which journalists like Amil Umraw of the Huffington Post website ( which is known for its antipathy towards white South Africans – ask Verashni Pillay, she’ll tell you) try to dismiss as ordinary crime when they are in fact hate crimes.
Here’s an illustration from the Roets book of Robert Lynn with the blowtorch which was used in his torture. This was another story that the ANC and the Virtue Signallers and the Hate Merchants were unable to keep from an international audience because Lynn and his murdered wife Sue were British nationals.
That’s not just a crime, that’s a hate crime.
Here’s a photograph of the drill which was used to torture Nicci Simpson in a farm attack.
That’s not just a crime that’s a hate crime.
It is common cause that as a matter of deliberate and de facto ANC policy, former President Thabo Mbeki did away with the efficient Commando farm patrol protection system and, equally deliberately, reneged on an undertaking to replace it with a system of similar efficacy. Roets creates a chronology of the evolution of this despicable policy and its ineluctable consequence – increasing and increasingly-murderous attacks on a now more vulnerable farming community, but that evidence had already been presented – without denial by the ANC – in Afriforum’s submission to the South African Human Rights Commission in September 2014:
In 2003 former president Thabo Mbeki announced against all expectations that the commando system would be abolished. The ruling ANC argued that this system, which provided a platform for members of the agricultural community to become involved with safety initiatives in rural South Africa, represented the security interests of the white farming community only. Mbeki stated that the structure would be replaced by a structure that would be controlled by the police (this promise has to this day not been fulfilled). Statistics on farm murders were, however, still released.
Not long after the abolition of the commandos, farm attacks were on the increase. In 2007 attacks on farms had escalated by almost 25%. The reaction of the minister of police was that statistics on farm murders would not be released any more. According to this policy farm murders were, in spite of the sharp increase, officially no longer a priority.
Complicit in farm murders
Roets cites ten reasons why the government should be regarded as complicit in farm murders:
- The deprioritising of SAPS response, despite an increase in attacks.
- Scorning and ridiculing victims who call for a focused counter-strategy.
- Negligent police investigations and violation of victims’ rights.
- The negative stereotyping of white farmers in particular.
- The double standards and a hierarchy of recognition with regard to victims.
- The encouragement of hate speech against white farmers.
- The continued romanticising of violence against white farmers.
- The shielding of criminals and of those who encourage genocide.
- The justification of murders.
- Direct involvement.
One only has to look at an Afriforum timeline to see the justification for the above-mentioned concerns.
If you question point ten and the subtitle of the Roets book – Government Complicity in South Africa’s Brutal farm Murders – then have a look at one of its most disturbing photographs – captured on a CCTV camera during a farm attack executed with military precision – which points to the direct involvement of state agencies in farm attacks.
You don’t buy signal jammers at Makro or Game and if nobody denies police involvement in cash-in-transit heists or taxi industry murders, why would it be impossible for them to be involved in attacks on farms?
Roets analyses at length the role played by police indifference in following up farm murders and the police recently went so far as to issue a lying statement seeking to ratchet up hatred against farmers.
The following extract from the book with reference to the murder of two year-old Wilmien Potgieter testifies to the callous indifference of the African National Congress towards the primeval bestiality of her murder and of others like her:
Two years later, on the anniversary of the Potgieter murders, several hundred farmers marched in Pretoria to the office of the Minister of Police, Nathi Mthethwa, protesting about the continued attacks and the government’s unconcerned attitude. The Minister refused to accept the memorandum or to send a representative to accept it. The marchers were also barred from leaving the memorandum at reception. Shortly thereafter, those who call for the prioritising of farm attacks were described by the Minister as people who seek attention and who are attempting to curb the police’s initiative to address real crime.
Roets says there has been no improvement in the government’s attitude since then.
The African National Congress responds with enthusiastic alacrity when a white person is guilty of a racist utterance but, when it comes to the unspeakably evil murder of children like two-year old Wilmien Potgieter, – shot in the head at point blank range – can you remember a single official ANC statement which reflects an abhorrence of such bloodthirstiness or compassion for the lives so viciously and needlessly snuffed out?
Can you, for that matter, remember a single empathetic article or statement by any of the above-mentioned journalists or politicians about this act of demonic evil which in an advanced and competitive democracy would have dominated headlines for weeks?
In fact, when the former Minister of Police, Nathi Mthethwa, dismissed Afriforum’s concerns about farm murders as publicity stunts, the silence from Luthuli House was deafening, but can the ANC mention any other country in the world where farmers are so afraid of being murdered that they retreat to the nearest town at night?
What angers the Virtue Signallers, the Hate Merchants and the Afrikaner haters, though, is the stoic dignity of those bereaved in these hate crimes.
Monuments to their dead
They build monuments to their dead – from babes in arms to the frail aged, all slaughtered with less dignity than is afforded abattoir animals. They erect white crosses on a farm hillside at Ysterberg near Polokwane or engrave the names of their defenceless loved ones who were the victims of such malevolent degeneracy on the Wall of Remembrance at Nampo Park in Bothaville in the Orange Free State.
The memorial to hundreds of murdered farmers and their murdered families, including children and the frail aged, at Nampo Park in Bothaville, OFS
What they don’t do is seek revenge by blockading roads, stoning vehicles and burning down schools, libraries, community halls, railway stations and university buildings.
Would Max du Preez and Pierre de Vos and Fikile Mbalula and Nathi Mthethwa and Marc Davies and Nickolaus Bauer and Ranjeni Munusamy and Eusebius McKaiser and Kevin Ritchie and Amil Umraw and Julius Malema care to speculate on the reason for this? Could it be that the Afrikaner has a very different culture, value system, mindset and ethos to those who so cruelly murder them, their parents and their children and indulge in such mindless destruction?
In contemplating the question, should consideration not be given to the fact that the white Afrikaner was the first ethnic group in the history of humankind to voluntarily cede political power while still retaining control of the military and the police and also the first such group to voluntarily disable their weapons of mass destruction?
Biased reports
Roets devotes a chapter to the role of the media – specifically the English Press – in suppressing news of these murders and this torture and writing openly biased and brazenly false articles which seek to denigrate our dwindling numbers of food providers as racist oppressors and to ramp up ethnic hatred against them.
Donald Trump has focused world attention on the wanton, feral butchery of our farming innocents and the fury of the African National Congress is palpable but impotent.
It can no longer suppress this news as it has in the past – through its control of the state broadcaster, for example – because thanks to Donald Trump and the meticulous investigation of Afriforum’s farm murder researcher, Lorraine Claasen, the world not only now knows about these murders and the ANC’s complicit role in those murders, it finally has the necessary and conclusive proof.
The 414 pages of the densely-annotated Kill the Boer – Government Complicity in South Africa’s Brutal Farm Murders should be brought to the attention of opinion formers in all the world’s democracies because, I would argue, the monstrous brutality of these unpardonable murders and the scale of these murders which specifically target farmers, are without precedent in the current century.
