The brutal and unchanging nature of farm attacks and murders in South Africa is concerning. Most farmers are white.
The victims are often brutally shot, and there has been no significant decline in the brutality of these incidents.
Two documentaries worth watching are:
- Farmlands, by Lauren Southern, and
- Plaasmoorde: The Killing Fields, by Katie Hopkins
AfriForum releases a yearly report on farm attacks.
In 2022, there were 333 farm attacks and 50 farm murders. Most victims were older than 60, making them physically more vulnerable. The police arrested only 33 of the suspects. An 89-year-old woman was bludgeoned to death with a chair, and a 17-year-old boy was shot and killed along with his mother and five other females.
In the same year, 40% of farm attack victims were shot, and in some incidents, victims or their relatives were tied up before being murdered.
Other methods include assault, bludgeoning, stabbing (14% of deaths), hacking (4% of deaths), and suffocation. In one horrifying case, a husband and wife died after the attackers set their house on fire with both of them still inside.
The number of attackers is often more than two and sometimes as many as eleven.
Are farm attacks random or planned?
I think a bit of both.
And I have a suspicion that some of them get foreign funding.
