SA must hold farmers sacred

WHAT is it that’s sacred to South Africans? You know – those things we hold dear as a country and that nobody should mess with? Top of the “it’s so obvious it hurts” priority list – after the sanctity of life itself – must surely be looking after those things that make human life possible: air, water, food, shelter and sleep. Should farmers be on that list? If we wish to survive, absolutely! You can last about four minutes without oxygen, two to three days without water, but after about three weeks without food, your body begins to eat itself in a last-ditch attempt to live.

Without food we die! Without growers of food to sow, grow, reap, cut, dice and shrink-wrap the food onto our shelves, we die!

Our modern, city-bound lifestyles leave the majority of us with no other means to fend for ourselves.

But this is about more than simply survival: the growing of (surplus) food is fundamental to any economy.

Our economic value chain starts when the farmer exchanges his or her eggs for someone else’s bacon, so farmers are indispensable to any country.

Yet, by some accounts, it seems we’re beginning to eat ourselves.

South African farmers are being killed at such a rate that they could easily be listed next to rhinos and elephants on the endangered species list.

Data on farm murders isn’t exact, due to how incidents on farms are reported, defined and recorded by the South African Police Services (SAPS) and others.

But data is available from those speaking out on behalf of farmers, such as Afriforum and the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU).

Afriforum asserts that in the last year – from April 2016 to March 2017 – there were 357 farm attacks, resulting in 74 murders.

TAU asserts that in the 27-year period from 1990-2017 there have been a total of 4 266 attacks on farms, resulting in 1 888 murders, of which farmers (1 218) are the main victims, followed by immediate family/spouses (498) and farmworkers (148).

According to TAU data, murders peaked in 2002 (119) and 2004 (115), and the most attacks happened in 2016 (369) and 2015 (318).

In an incident in March this year, a woman victim – over a period of six hours – was burnt with an iron, had a bag pulled over her head to smother her, had her feet impaled with an electric drill and her attackers allegedly threatened to cut off her legs with a grinding machine.

Horrific, barbaric – behaviour totally devoid of any humanity.

It appears that the farmers’ vehicles (in 84 cases – 24%) and their firearms (69 cases – 19%) are the main focus of attacks.

It’s a small (and empty) mercy that only 13 incidents involved torture, and only six of the cases involved a woman being raped (as per public reports, although the actual figure could be higher).

It’s not as if our killing fields haven’t received attention.

Steve Hofmeyr leads the “white-genocide” choir supported by a strong social media echo chamber.

Afriforum and TAU regularly raise the matter both publicly and with various government bodies.

The Human Rights Commission (HRC) has had three rounds of public engagements and subsequently issued a report each time (2003, 2008, and 2015) highlighting the need for a holistic response to criminal behaviour.

The SAPS has developed two specific strategies on the matter – the most recent being its Rural Safety Strategy released in 2011, which focuses on four pillars: police doing a better job, all hands on deck, safety begins at home (lock your doors), and driving development beyond the cities.

Parliament’s portfolio committee on police discussed it in August last year, followed – in March this year – by parliament itself arranging an urgent debate on the matter.

And therein lies the rub – it remains a debate, it doesn’t come close to being a dialogue.

It’s a conversation with one purpose: winning political space, not understanding.

We jostle over who has the correct statistics, as if 10 more or 20 fewer deaths makes any difference to those who lose their lives, or the families and friends who survive them.

We shadow-box on the question of race – implying that black people hate white people so much that they would burn them with irons; that white people hate black people so much that they would feed them to lions (both actual incidents)?

Which white or black person sympathises with the torturer – thinks that it is OK to force a man into a coffin and have him beg for his life, or burn a woman’s breasts?

The debate has morphed into a wrestle for the moral high ground – the more we can demonstrate our suffering and how bad we have it, the higher up the moral mountain we climb, the greater weight we deem to wield in deciding who’s to blame.

And the blame list has many candidates: the UmshiniWam-singing president, incompetent police, opportunistic political parties encouraging land grabs, white colonialists hanging onto their stolen privilege, disgruntled workers who want pay-back in blood. But always “them” to blame, never “us”!

While levels of violence and death may vary from year to year, there are two constants – our farms remain unsafe spaces, and the current debate appears to have no impact.

It bears repeating that deadly violence on farms is the constant.

Even if using the term “genocide” were to get the issue heard at the United Nations, their “blue-helmet” peacekeepers won’t be appearing over the horizon to save the day. It’s our problem to solve. And we’re looking in the wrong place. We’re wheel-spinning on the detail and missing the pattern. It is estimated that about 500 000 South Africans have been murdered since 1994, resulting in one of the highest murder rates in the world.

This means (if the TAU figures are accurate) that murdered farmers represent only 0.4% of the total number of people killed in our country.

Murder is our real problem. And debating, not dialoguing, from the moral high ground is another.

It’s true that we need food to live; that we need safe farms to grow our economy.

But there are two things we need to hold dear – to declare sacred.

Two things no one should mess with – the sanctity of (human) life, and conversations that allow us to hear the other.

Each of us holds a piece of the puzzle. By competing instead of listening when we talk to each other, we miss crucial aspects that are key to breaking the pattern.

South African farmers are being killed at such a rate that they could easily be listed next to rhinos and elephants on the endangered species list