South Africa was recently rocked by another gruesome farm murder, this time the horrific killing of 21-year-old farm manager Brendin Horner. He was tied to a gate on the De Rots farm outside Paul Roux, tortured with a knife and possibly clubs, before being murdered.

Irate white farmers stormed the local magistrates’ court where they vandalised a police cell and roughed up a female warrant officer in their attempt to get to the two murder accused, Sekola Piet Matlaletsa and Sekwetje Isaiah Mahlamba, undoubtedly to exact revenge. This episode was a prelude to several weeks of tense confrontation between different interest groups in the country.

White farmers, who mobilised in unprecedented numbers in person or over social media, are increasingly convinced of two things: 1) that the South African government does not care about their lives and 2) that farm murders constitute genocide motivated by black resentment towards white people in general.

These feelings recently found their way to influential Murdoch-controlled media in the United States (Fox News, New York Post), where they were picked by Donald Trump, who then despatched an emissary to South Africa to investigate what was going on.

Black people, in rural towns especially, also believe that white people are generally racist, still control economic power and “… it is not a rainbow nation”. Subjacent to this tense standoff and driving some of the resentment towards whites in particular, and the governing political establishment in general, is rural poverty and the unresolved land question.

Several thousand people showed up in Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) regalia under the hastily concocted but implausible banner of protecting public property. EFF leader Julius Malema doesn’t use dog whistles any more. He uses overtly racist tropes because he knows that there are major unresolved issues of poverty, inequality and unemployment in rural areas in particular, and those who bear the brunt of those scourges are willing listeners, ready converts, if you will, of his gospel. The EFF’s aggressive messaging on land reform, its favourite cudgel against the ANC, is finding resonance with the poor, landless unemployed.

Now, recent election results also show that rural white people are fleeing the DA in droves for the Freedom Front Plus (FF+), notably due to its tough “Slaan Terug” (Fight Back) messaging. Basically, we have communities that live next to each other who dislike, are indifferent to or constantly suspect each other – the perfect conditions for criminals to exploit.

The schism between blacks and whites was palpable once again in Senekal on 16 October 2020 ahead of and following the bail hearing of murder accused Matlaletsa and Mahlamba, driven, on one side, by Frans Jooste’s KommandoKorps which vowed to create a Boer Republic in the Free state, and on the other side, by Julius Malema who vowed that “we want to move on to the land, we want to occupy the land, we want to produce food for ourselves. We don’t want white farmers’ food.”

White South Africans account for just under 8% of the country’s population and most of them live in urban areas. The few who live in rural areas belong to small, tight-knit communities. This helps explain the general sense of frustration and helplessness that they feel whenever another neighbour is killed.

According to the South African police, there were 47 farm murders in 2018-2019. At the same time, the Victims of Crime Report 2018/19 reveals that a total of about 32,000 murders were committed around the country over the 2018-2019 period, and most of the victims were black. A total of 1.3 million cases of home invasions were also reported over the same period, of which the majority of victims were whites in urban areas.    

While condemning Horner’s brutal murder in his weekly letter to the nation on 12 October 2020, President Cyril Ramaphosa insisted that there was no generalised hatred towards white people. “The claim that violent crime on farms is part of an orchestrated campaign by blacks to drive white farmers off their land is simply not borne out by fact. Numerous studies show that crime in farming communities is largely opportunistic,” he wrote.

He added that: “The brutal killing of a young white farmer, allegedly by black men, followed by the spectacle of white farmers storming a police station to get to a black suspect has opened up wounds that go back many generations. If we are to succeed in tackling violent crime, particularly in rural communities, we must confront this trauma and challenge the racial attitudes that prevent a united response… The farming community is an integral part of our economy. The farming community produces the food that we eat. Violent crime on farms poses not just a threat to the safety of our rural communities, but to our nation’s food security.”

President Ramaphosa is certainly right that most farm murders are opportunistic in nature, judging by the crime statistics. However, we cannot completely dismiss the possibility of racial animus, given the unspeakable violence that goes with some of these killings, and at the same time, one life lost is one too many. Regardless of the motivation, farm murders must be stopped.

A community divided against itself cannot fight crime in all its forms effectively. Policing experts will tell you that keeping a community safe is not the police’s job alone. All community members must have each other’s backs. They must be each other’s eyes and ears. The path to peaceful communities goes through a number of things.

It begins with better economic opportunities for both black people and white people. Although we often have this image of whites in rural areas as well-to-do landowners, the reality is that most of them do not own land and are also barely getting by.

Aggressive investment in rural communities must be prioritised. Let’s remember that we are talking about areas where there is no robust private sector to replace the state when delivery of basic services (water, electricity, security, etc) is weak or absent.

President Ramaphosa’s recently announced Economic Reconstruction and Recovery Plan barely mentions rural economies. Yet, data produced by Statistics South Africa shows that 31.6 million people were living in poverty in 2006. By 2015, that number had hardly changed, dropping only ever so slightly to 30.4 million. Former Bantustan areas still bear a disproportionate burden of poverty, and poverty in these communities is being further exacerbated by persistent drought conditions. Where opportunities are few, it is easy for schisms to exist, opening the way for criminals to come in and do damage.

Rural municipal capacities must be strengthened to help them provide better services. Police stations can also strengthen relations with communities in order to protect better and pick up tips about imminent or recent criminal activity.

The school system must be improved, including community centres, playgrounds, libraries, etc. If you come from a community where there are no perspectives, and your surest way to escape the poverty trap is by getting a good education and the school system in your community is not very good, the chances that you will not be significantly better off than your parents and that your children will not be significantly better off than you increase exponentially. That has to change.

Perhaps the government’s most important, most symbolic and surest vehicle to transform rural areas is through land reform. Land reform carries much symbolism and kicking the can down the road creates restlessness and a feeling of bitterness among blacks in rural areas in particular. It is possible to expand access to land for many within a short space of time.

In a recent opinion piece in Daily Maverick, I argue that the government should adopt a “big bang” component as part of its land reform instruments, through which farm plots are capped at 20 hectares maximum, titled and handed over to beneficiaries quickly, together with a once-off lump sum. These new beneficiaries should then be adequately supported by local cooperatives and community mechanisation and irrigation pools.

The idea here is not necessarily to develop full-time commercial farmers but rather to root as many people as possible in a specific family project in a specific location, and give them a springboard with the potential to produce for household consumption. Let people start with permaculture farms. In time, some may take the step up into commercial farming. Ultimately, this approach will increase the number of people who own property and have hope for the future. The more people do well in a community, the more they will work to help and protect each other. There must be a palpable sense of shared prosperity and common destiny to allow harmonious community relationships to emerge.

Finally, the state of race relations remains a touchy subject and efforts must be made to identify the subjacent resentments that people have for each other in order to exorcise the bad and amplify the good. Truth and reconciliation remains in suspense and every day that we refuse to confront the demons of the past, we leave gaps that crooks and criminals can exploit. The government should work with community actors to continue the healing process so that people start seeing their destinies as intertwined.

With these solutions, I do not presume to supply all the answers to the terrible scourge of farm murders. But at least they are a major step in the right direction, I hope. DM