South Africa Is Shooting Itself in the Foot

Last year, The European Conservative sent me to the heart of South Africa, into the Great Karoo, to make a three-part film focussing on both the political and the conservation challenges and successes there. It is typical of any reporting on the general instability of South Africa, particularly by conservative journals, to focus on the farm attacks that have scourged that country. But having previously lived out there for some years, and having friends there at present, I knew there was a very different story to tell. 

South Africa is a country where, despite much governmental incompetency and corruption, huge efforts are made to bring about greater social cohesion, community-building, and where creative and regenerative conservationism is restoring health to the country’s magnificent landscapes and protecting their unique wildlife. But while all that is true, it shouldn’t be emphasised to the point of diminishing the seriousness of farm attacks and the fact that this problem is not going away. 

It is difficult to ascertain certain figures regarding how frequently these attacks and resultant murders are taking place. Many claim that official figures sanctioned by the South African government downplay the gravity of the problem. Afrikaner organisations like Afriforum and Solidariteit—to senior members of the latter, by the way, I have spoken directly—keep their own annual records of attacks, murders, and even the various methods of killing. 

The most optimistic records suggest that a minimum of one murder per month occurs. An Afrikaner grandfather of a family that attends our church here in England recently abandoned his farm in South Africa and moved to the UK, doing so only after every other farmer in the surrounding area had been killed.

It is not only the rate of such attacks and the frequency with which they coincide with one murder or more that should concern us, but the brutality of the murders. Such killings often include prolonged cruelty, involving rape of women, scalding with fire or boiling water, or torture with knives or hammers.

Some may think that Afrikaners, being of European heritage, have no right to be there in the country. But really, Afrikaners are truly African. They have been in that part of the African continent for centuries. In some cases, their ancestors intermarried with indigenous Africans of various tribes, and consequently the Afrikaners have developed over the centuries into a unique African ethnic group in their own right.

When I travelled in South Africa last year to make the film mentioned above, I spent time in Graaff-Reinet, a beautiful town in the Great Karoo. The town is named after one of those great pioneers of exploration and settlement from whom many Afrikaners descend: Cornelis Jacob van de Graaff was a Dutch soldier who served as governor of the Cape. ‘Reinet,’ however, refers to the name of his wife, Hester Reynet, a woman of the indigenous Khoekhoe people of hunter-gathers. It is likely that descendants of this couple are farming lands in South Africa to this day.

Ancestors of the Afrikaners were travelling into what became South Africa and settling territory there in the mid-15th century. That’s more than a hundred years before the Zulus, for example, travelled down from central Africa and settled the area now called KwaZulu-Natal. As Europeans journeyed inland, they acquired territory from the tribes that roamed there by purchasing it from them. Conflicts arose between these newly arrived farmers and the tribes only when the latter attempted to take back by violence what they’d handed over in exchange for goods.

Both the Zulu and the Xhosa peoples, who are the two largest ethnic groups in South Africa, aren’t strictly indigenous to the region. Indeed, the indigenous people of the area that became South Africa, the San and the Khoekhoe, were largely pushed into what is today Namibia during the 18th century, following persecution from other newly arrived African tribes. 

All that, though, is ancient history now. South Africa is a country of many peoples. Nelson Mandela, of whom I’m not uncritical, was right when he proposed the vision of a ‘rainbow nation,’ a land where each ethnic group could be proud of their distinct tradition and history, and yet all make an equal claim to be South African. 

Increasingly, over the years, it has become apparent that many do not want the Afrikaners or the other South Africans of European heritage to be among the colours of that rainbow. Farm attacks continue; at the rallies of belligerent parties like the EFF, “Shoot the Boer” is chanted; and at the beginning of this year, South Africa’s new President Cyril Ramaphosa passed a bill that allows the state to seize land without compensation. 

The government claims that the new bill only entails the seizure of unused land, but many worry that such a clause will be insufficient to stop it being utilised in the future in the service of race-politics. In short, much suggests that South Africa isn’t adequately learning from the recent history of its neighbour to the north, Zimbabwe—the greatest victims of whose racist policies have turned out to be indigenous, black Africans. If South Africa goes down that path, everyone in the country will suffer, not simply those people of European heritage.

South Africa, despite everything, is a country of a great many success stories. But those successes are inextricably bound up with the presence of people of European heritage. Indeed, one of the reasons why South Africa has developed farming, medicine, the sciences, viticulture, conservation, and so much else far beyond any other African country is because of its history of settlement by European peoples. That may not be a fashionable point to make, but it is unassailably true. 

The plight of South African farmers has been brought to international attention in recent years. Both Donald Trump and ‘First Buddy’ Elon Musk have claimed that “white farmers” in South Africa are being deliberately targeted. Trump also said that, under his presidency, white South Africans would be allowed to settle in the U.S. with refugee status because of the persecution he says they face. 

Of course, we should remain open to the notion that farmers are not being targeted on grounds of race or ethnicity. The fact is that South Africa is a remarkably violent country, with around 27,000 murders occurring every year. Hence, it is inevitable that a percentage of those killings will be of rural farmers. But given that any future prosperity in the country will be bound up with the presence of South Africans of European heritage, especially those that generate food for the country, any failure to protect them will only accelerate South Africa’s demise.

In turn, wherever you stand on the debate—whether you think farmers are being specifically targeted or not; whether you think such killings are inspired by race-politics or are just land-grabbing initiatives or plain old robberies—it doesn’t really matter. The future flourishing and prosperity of all South Africans, whatever their ethnic background, will be inextricably connected to the presence of South Africans of European heritage. South Africa must look at Zimbabwe’s recent history as it would a cautionary tale, and accordingly it must protect its farmers.