I’ll be wearing black on Monday

Farm murders have not received much attention because statistically ‘they’re a drop in the ocean’

IF WE were ever in doubt of the power of social media, we should have all the proof we need come Monday. Then, if the wailing and gnashing of the echo chambers on Facebook are anything to go by, the streets of our cities should be bedecked with people clad in black – a silent protest by the citizenry of South African against the intolerable levels of violent crime and, in particular, farm murders.

Farm murders haven’t received the kind of attention some people think they ought to have – outside the expected column centimetres in certain newspapers, mostly Afrikaans.

There’s a reason for that. Statistically, farm murders are a drop in the ocean.

Ernst Roets of AfriForum says there have been at least 342 attacks and 70 murders since the beginning of the year.

Take that against the crime statistics released in Parliament this week, where there were almost 19 016 people murdered. Then add to that the clamour about farm murders, which is actually a cacophony on social media – and much beloved of the white right.

They’ll have you believe there’s a genocide against white far mers, a sustained campaign, aided and abetted by members of the government to target farmers, specifically white ones, ergo all whites are at risk. Before you know it, we’re back into the realm of “Africa Addio”, the infamous 1966 Italian documentary that became the same kind of rallying cry and totem for racists that the fictitious Protocols of the Elders of Zion became for generations of anti-Semites.

But the truth of the matter is that white far mers don’t do their own cause much good, either.

Some remain racist and arrogant. Some are selfish and uncaring, neither paying decent wages nor providing decent accommodation. Some are just thugs.

Yesterday, Willem Oosthuizen and Theo Jackson were jailed for effectively the next 10 years – and more – for forcing Victor Mlotshwa into a coffin and then threatening to set him alight. They were farm managers who claimed Mlotshwa had been stealing copper cables.

It is a proper sentence; one that should hopefully send a message that you can’t take the law into your own hands, that you can’t torture confessions out of suspects.

The case is a triumph for everyone involved in its successful conclusion; police, detectives, prosecutors, judiciary.

The question is whether the processes of the law are followed with the same assiduous attention to detail in other cases – particularly those against farmers. They don’t appear to be.

Farmers are easy targets, they’re isolated for a start. That means that help isn’t at hand, it also means that they have to be self-sufficient so there’s normally cash at the homestead, firearms, ammunition, fuel and vehicles.

There’s also another reality. The violence meted out to them often appears disproportionate to the loot with which the robbers get away with – compared to, for example, a similar house robbery in the suburbs.

In some cases, farmers have been tortured horrifically.

There has been more than one case of far mers’ wives being burnt with steam irons to make them give up the keys to the safe. Threats of sexual violence are commonplace.

Yet, the rate of arrest of the perpetrators is parlous and the successful prosecution rate of those apprehended, dire.

Unlike other crimes, there is little official condemnation – unless painfully extracted by far mers’ lobbies and the predominantly white civil rights organisation, AfriForum.

A dispassionate observer might not wonder if there was more than a little racism at play here, underpinned by an unspoken belief that whites are getting their just deserts after more than three centuries of colonialism followed by four hard decades of industrial scale state authored and legitimated racism.

It is difficult to remove the context from anything in South Africa; scratch the surface and it’s all about race, whether the debate is now framed as white privilege or not.

Add in the highly emotive issue of land ownership and the fact that most of the commercial farms are still predominantly white owned – even though the biggest land owner is still the state, believe it or not – and the issue becomes even more toxic.

The reality is that by a mixture of circumstances – external and of our own making – the democratic dividend of 1994 has not translated into meaningful benefit for the majority of South Africans.

They, almost a generation later, are still stuck in the iron grip of poverty where the brave slogan of a “better life for all” has morphed into a fantastic life for some of the new elite, with the old middle class still appearing to sit very pretty indeed.

Farmers find themselves among the latter, notwithstanding the rigours of drought, the perennial threat of dispossession of their livelihoods, unsympathetic bank managers – and the very real fear of being targeted where they live and no one giving a damn about it.

It’s difficult not to watch Chris Loubser’s video clip and not be moved. He’s a farm manager in Franschhoek. He filmed it, sitting in his bakkie after hearing of the murder of his friend, 47-year-old Joubert Conradie who was shot on his Klapmuts farm by robbers.

Conradie died from his wounds in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Loubser sent it, probably via WhatsApp, to 20 of his friends. It went viral.

Not every farmer is racist. Indeed, there are many farmers who have been incredibly progressive, including creating profit sharing schemes for their workers and, in some cases, voluntarily giving up part of their lands to staff to work for their own account.

Not every farmer is white. But every farmer is at risk. That’s the sad reality.

We are all entitled to due process under the law. We are all entitled by virtue of living here to be protected by the state and to have those who threaten us, bodily or otherwise, arrested, prosecuted and removed from society, if need be.

That is the law. The reality, though, is that we aren’t all equal under the law – when it comes to how it is applied.

If we are serious about the better life for all, it starts with feeling safe in bed, at home at night – irrespective of who we are or where we are.

That’s why I will be wearing black on Monday.