FARM SECURITY

Farm security in SA: An update on the deadly scourge that’s killing and maiming the country’s farmers

Tied up, stabbed, strangled, shot, bludgeoned, tortured… their names appear on the Geni website, along with the details of their murders. Sibonelo, Johanna, Goberdhan, Renee, Themba, Adam, Jeremias… all with family and friends and among the 59 people murdered on South Africa’s farms and smallholdings since April 2020. According to civil rights organisation AfriForum, 64% of the victims in the almost 400 attacks recorded during this period were over the age of 50 and, in at least six incidents, nothing was even stolen1 .

Although there was a decline in the number of farm attacks in the 2020/2021 financial year compared to the previous financial year, says Ernst Roets, Head of Policy and Action in civil rights organisation AfriForum, there was an ominous increase in farm murders. During the past year, 59 people were murdered on farms in South Africa, compared to 41 in the previous year.

Who or what’s behind this particularly heinous crime?

Benedict Weaver of the Zero Foundation Africa says: “Recent research suggests that foreign nationals are among those behind farm attacks, which have increased in Limpopo Province and near the border areas of both eSwatini and Lesotho. The results are as intended: increased anxiety within the community, demand for safety and self-defence training, emigration to the urban areas and a disincentive for new and younger farmers.”

As happened in Kenya, Rhodesia and then Zimbabwe, he continues, attacks on farmers and their herds or crops were largely motivated by a desire to redistribute land. The same scenario has unfolded in South Africa, with increasing demand for land redistribution and exacerbated by an unclear governmental policy regarding land reclamation.

Motives range from inside jobs, disgruntled employees and opportunistic criminals to poachers of both endangered species and red meat.

While there are those who refuse to believe that there is racial motivation involved, Weaver says that one of the alternative explanations – that of financial gain – is also flawed, not least of all because the majority of victims are white farmers and also because the attacks are far more brutal than those in urban areas.

Laurence Palmer, a retired Lt. Col. in the South African Defence Force, headed up the Oribi Commando in Port Shepstone on the lower South Coast of KwaZuluNatal for 12 years. During this period, the Commando played a major role in keeping the farmers safe along with the support of the SAPS. “Farm attacks were minimal in those days,” he says. A large percentage of farm attacks that have taken place in the last decade, however, have been committed by people from within the inner circles, he continues, citing employees, service providers, friends and even family members who enjoy close and trusted access to the properties. “Some of the perpetrators have or had personal grudges against the farmers, others were coerced into facilitating attacks by outsiders, and while opportunist attacks were and are possible, in most instances they are carefully planned and carried out with military precision.”

Bill Sandham, Commercial Manager (responder) for Daytona Electronics, believes that farm attacks are motivated by an array of motives including need, envy, opportunity, land rights, racial tension, the need for cash to support substance abuse, and anger around working conditions and wages.

Shelley Scheepers, Verifier’s National Operations Director Statistics, agrees. “Motives range from inside jobs, disgruntled employees and opportunistic criminals to poachers of both endangered species and red meat.”

The challenges

During his time on the South Coast, Laurence Palmer worked very closely with the farming community, helping to develop plans and strategies to keep them safe. “The Commando played a big role in this, and, with the support of the SAPS (South African Police Service), we were able to keep the farmers, their families and their property safe to a very large degree.”

“When the Commando system was disbanded,” he continues, the police were supposed to take over the farm protection role – which never happened. The police do not have the resources, nor does its reactive culture fit in with the proactivity required, he maintains, whereas the Commando system worked because it was a formal structure with commandand-control support, resources, and a dedicated focus – farmers protecting farmers.

“I don’t understand why the farmers didn’t group together and continue with the structures that existed under the Commando system,” he says, “but they did not, and now they are unprepared to meet attacks head-on and to successfully defend themselves.”

Prevention before Reaction

Palmer, who was recently approached by concerned farmers on the South Coast for advice, says his overriding philosophy is and has always been ‘Prevention before Reaction’. “Obviously, reaction is required to try to apprehend the attackers, gather evidence and provide medical and other support. But it is far better to be prepared and able to repel and survive an attack.” Farmers are often caught unaware, with the criminals already in the yard or the house before they realise what’s happening, he says. “On average there are two to four assailants, so the farmer doesn’t stand a chance in hand-to-hand combat. He therefore has to ensure that he has enough time and space to proactively respond to an attack.”

Despite the promulgation of the National Rural Security Strategy in 2019, intended to address rural safety as an integrated day-to-day policing approach, it’s not working very well in reality, avers Ben Weaver. In part, the strategy encompasses a state-sponsored response to acts of terror, as previously witnessed in Kenya during the Mau-Mau insurgency (1952-1960), Rhodesia (during the 1970s) and Zimbabwe (in the early 2000s),” he explains. “In these countries, the security response to farm attacks and stock theft had been a case of ‘too little too late’.

Rural safety and development is desperately under-resourced, says Scheepers, and the massive amount of land between farmhouses makes it even more difficult to secure areas from the furthest point of their boundaries to their homesteads. “Crime scenes are not being attended to timeously (if at all) due to police limitations or inefficiencies (no vehicles, no staff, no interest), and to employ permanent security is too costly for many farmers who are already feeling the economic crunch. They just cannot afford to deploy sufficient manpower to keep themselves, their families, and their farm workers safe.”

For Sandham, it has always been about the total lack of ‘legal’ consequences: no capture at the scene of the crime, few, if any, arrests, no incarceration, no fasttracking of investigations and a police service unable to deliver the most basic service much of the time.

“It’s almost impossible to cover these size areas with one piece of tech,” says Scheepers. “The issue we see most of the time is that farmers are inundated with salespeople trying to sell them the ‘silver bullet in technology’. Most farmers will buy into these schemes once, at a big cost, and then, when the technology fails, they become sceptical of technology in general. This then becomes a harder sell for independent consultants who have done their homework and know which technology works where.”

Attackers aren’t fools

Adds Palmer: “Farmers need to accept that they are responsible for their own safety, they must be ever-alert and prepared for the unexpected. The attackers are not fools: they observe, they plan, they are determined and, above all, they have nothing to lose. Human life has no value, and the normal values and deterrents that most people live by means nothing to them. Also important is for farmers to avoid disputes at all costs, to maintain effective communication with their workers and to solve problems before they escalate into out-of-control situations.”

BEE

Something else that needs to be considered, in the interests of reducing farm violence, believes Edwin Wakefield, MD of Mimic Components, is a BEEnegotiated handover of some properties, accompanied by a ten-year training period and a fair payment to the retiring farmer in return for the training.

1. https://afriforum.co.za/en/farm-murders-onthe-increase-again/