Farm attacks are no conspiracy, but reality

At the risk of being labelled right-wing or regarded as someone who sympathises with the white right-wingers’ ethnic cause, I want to differ with anyone who believes the ongoing farm attacks are part of a right-wing conspiracy to make the country look bad in the eyes of the world.

For that matter, I am not even a “coconut” (those who are said to be black outside and white inside and often mimicks the European culture while avoiding their own culture like a plague), nor am I sucking up to anybody politically or otherwise – although I know where I come from with my struggle history.

But the truth has to be told: farm attacks are no conspiracy but a reality.

No matter where the complaints about farm attacks and the accompanying deaths emanate from, we, as a nation, should force the government to take action to stop this scourge.

The attacks and the heinous killing of farmers is something that should concern all of us because farmers, irrespective of their skin colour or political ideology, produce food for the nation.

Many had abandoned their land or stopped farming to live in the cities and go to retirement homes just to avoid risking their lives. I don’t blame them – I would do the same if I was their situation.

The fact that, in my assessment, the killings have taken a new turn and that thugs are not only targeting white farmers but also black farms, should tell us that politics is not part of this. Thuggery and crime have taken over. It means we must put politics aside and deal with the elephant in the room.

It serves no good purpose to argue about the number of attacks or deaths that occurred or who is the right person to talk about the matter. What is important is to fight this with all means at our disposal. There is ability and resources in abundance, but no political will.

My concern was sparked by the farm killings that occurred around my birth place, Stutterheim in the Eastern Cape, late last year. I was in the area when I heard about a white farmer and his employee who were slain in a robbery.

This occurred as people were struggling to come to terms with the gunning down of a well-known and adorable Stutterheim businessman, Gagik Ovsepian, an Armenian immigrant, also in a robbery.

Prior to the recent escalation, such attacks were rare in the Amahlathi area. I remember a few that happened in the ’60s, including that of my grandparents’ former employer and farm shop-owner, Harry Ella. Another was a white lady, “Nopiniza”, who ran a small shop on her hillside farm near the pine tree plantation. She and a neighbouring farmer were separately slain, but their murderers paid the ultimate price of death sentences.

Through my interaction with black farmers’ unions such as the National African Farmers Union of SA (Nafu) and its president, Motsepe Matlala, I realised black farmers were also being killed these days in robberies and stock-thefts.

In August last year, a Nafu member, well-known farmer and entrepreneur Simon Ngale Malebane, 61, from Radium near Bela Bela in Limpopo, and his employee Daniel Ngoagamobe, 59, were brutally murdered.

The launch of a rural safety strategy by the SAPS means nothing if it is not implemented. We have yet to hear about mass arrests of thugs who wander around the farms killing innocent farmers.

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