Description

Presentation to Members of the European Parliament 5 March 2015 by assistant-general-manager of the Transvaal Agricultural Union of South Africa.

Quote:
“Declare the farm murders against whites in South Africa crimes against humanity’, Van der Graaf urges the European Parliament:
“In a very violent country as is South Africa, to use words like ‘kill’, “shoot” ‘revolution’– is very dangerous and in fact inciting. Our government supports this and that is why we accuse them of a political agenda behind the murders of white South African farmers.’

Transvaal Agricultural Union warns that this is going to be another dangerous year for white South African farmers..

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5 March 2015 — by Henk van de Graaf, Assistant General Manager of Transvaal Agricultural Union of South Africa
BRUSSELS, BELGIUM —

Mr Chairman, Ladies and Gentlemen

South Africa’s year 2015 once again started on a very sad note. As early as January 3rd, we had our first farmer murdered this year.
Before the end of the first month of this year we had seven more… Until today not less than eleven South African farmers have been murdered in these first months of this year.
There were a total of 40 violent farm attacks so far this year, as far as we know.
Since 1990 the number of white people murdered on farms totals 1 762 people up to March 1 2015 – out of a total of 3,465 violent attacks on our farms.
These attacks started in all intensity after the then-State President Mr Frederick W de Klerk announced that he was “willing to start negotiations with the ANC on a new dispensation for South Africa.”
Right from the beginning the African National Congress – who then was and now still is actually nearly fully controlled by the South African Communist Party — stated it clearly that a process of so called land reform has to be launched, even if it would mean nationalising the land. (*leaving many white farm families homeless and destitute).

Ever since, the farm attacks and farm murders did not stop. An average of 70 people are annually murdered on South African farms.
— There are currently only about 30 000 commercial farmers left in South Africa (out of the original 85,000+ commercial (white) farmers in 1994.

Being an Afrikaner farmer in South Africa is one of the most dangerous occupations in the world. Compared to the international average of 7 per 100,000 murders per year South Africa registers 31,1 per 100 000 – but, projected on specific categories it reflects 54 per 100 000 for police officers and 132,8 per 100 000 for South African farmers.
It is said that these murders are not racially motivated. But why would it be that 1 064 of those murderdered were white farmers, compared to 73 black farmers? Why is it that 440 family members of white farmers were murdered against 33 family members of black farmers? Out of the 1 762 people murdered on the farms, 1 536 were white, and 226 were black.
We are of the opinion that those murders are not just crime. Not only are the farmers murdered, but in many cases they are tortured, women are raped and the whole family, together with the children, are brutally murdered. Cases have been reported where the murderers broke into the house, especially on a Sunday morning when the farmer and his family went to church. Everything they wanted to have was put in a car and then they just waited for the family to return home. Hours of torture followed during which the women were raped, sometimes in front of the husband and
children, and then the farmer was shot in cold blood with wife and children helplessly looking on.

Not even innocent children or elderly people are left in peace. Several years ago it was head news when an entire family in the province of the Free State was killed. First the farmer was killed, than his wife and lastly their three year old little daughter, who we believed had to witness the murder of her father and mother by those strangers. In another case the body of a murdered 77 year old farmer was put in his refrigerator. Another farmer was stabbed to death with knives by a number of attackers. They then uses is own bakkie, a light commercial vehicle used on the farms, to drive several times over his dead body, just to make sure their devil’s work was well done.

The 44 year Mr Frans Pieter of Rustenburg had the opportunity to give a last farewell to his family before he was murdered after a four hour orgy of torture to himself and his wife and two other family members. We know of cases where farmers were abducted, tortured and burnt with acid, where a farmer was strangled to death while milking his cows or where a farmer’s throat was cut in cold blood. I can keep you for hours busy with lots of gruesome stories of farm murders and farm attacks – stories of farmers or their families who have been hanged on a rope in the bathroom; people who have been beaten up to such an extent that family had to identify the victims on their clothes and jewellery, because they were unrecognizable beaten to death; elderly women, some of them deep in their 80’s, who were gang raped, or who were tortured with broken bottles in their vaginas; people who were bunt with boiling water, or burnt with hot irons.

And so I can go on for hours telling you in which barbaric manner farmers are killed nearly on a daily base. Some of them are not even reported anymore in our newspapers, and very seldom any mention is made on our state controlled television.
Some of the people who survive the attacks are traumatized for the rest of their lives, or have to live with a chopped of finger, or who are blind in one or both eyes.

The economic consequences of farm killings are enormous. Research has shown that it can take up to eight years after a farmer has been killed for a farm to be restore its full food production. Sometimes when a farmer is killed in a crucial time of the farming year, it can have the result of a farm going totally bankrupt.
This has an effect on the whole rural community. On many farms the farmer built a school for the children of his and his neighbours’ workers. So when a farmer is murdered, it is not only his own family that is suffering but also the farm workers, theirs schools, the businesses in the rural community, the churches etc.
Farms are nowadays mere fortresses, where farmers are sometimes too afraid doing their work on the lands to produce food for the whole nation. Instead of investing in new farming implements, farmers have to invest in electric wiring around their
houses, and into the most modern and technology advanced alarm systems to stay ahead of the criminals.
This is one of the reasons that the commercial farmers in South Africa are on the decline. During the 1980’s there were still some 80 000 farmers in South Africa, today we only have 30 000 left. It is expected from this smaller number of farmers to produce more and more food. The South African total population is now more than 54 million, and is still increasing. For all practical purposes South Africa does not have a border any more. Illegal immigrants flow into South Africa at a rate of up to 3 000 per day, especially through our borders with Zimbabwe and Mozambique, because border control is nearly non-existent. Those illegal immigrants also demand food and water, and at the end of the day housing.
It is interesting to note that those illegal immigrants are not often linked to farm attacks. However in many instances we see that the farmers’ own farm workers are involved in farm attacks and killings. In many cases this is as a result of intimidation of political extremists or labour unions. It must be noted that the labour unions in South Africa are ruled by members of the South African Communist Party. The relation between farmers and their workers is extremely good. South Africa is a large country and the farms are also large, resulting in being far from the cities or little towns. Farmers and their workers live for generations on the same farm, helping and supporting each other. Farmers are as dependent on their workers as the workers are dependent on their employer.
Mr. Chairman, this is no ordinary crime, or ordinary murder, if murder can be called ordinary at any time. The extent of violence and torture is immense and inhumane. On a regularly base we ask government to prioritize the investigation of farm killings. Recently one of government’s officials told us that farm attacks are no longer a priority but a mere concern. When farmers call on the police for help during an attack, most of the time the response is: “our police vehicle is out of order”, or: “there is no petrol in the police vehicle”, or it is mentioned that the vehicle is out to another crime scene, only to get afterwards evidence that the said vehicle was used by a corrupt police officer, taking his family on a nice trip, or buying his household’s groceries at the shop.
We know it is impossible for our police force to protect every single farmer in the country, but farmers were always willing to help the police in fighting any form of crime in the rural areas. A system called the Commandoes was implemented during the previous century. Those commandoes consisted of volunteers from the local communities, mostly farmers but also other persons, who did crime prevention under the protection of the South African Defence Force. Those commandoes were effective in keeping law and order intact, and fulfilled a very important role, making the hand of the police stronger in attending to other crime. Not long after the ANC took over power they dismantled the commando system, promising to put another structure in place. Those promises were fragrantly broken.
Farmers are now organising in their own agricultural structures, like in the farmers’ union I am working for, the former Transvaal Agricultural Union, nowadays better known as TAU SA. Unfortunately not all the farmers are members of agricultural unions, leaving them to a great extent on their own. But farmers who organise themselves in self protecting units, do not have any protection from government as it was in the past. It has been reported that when farmers protect themselves they even get jailed for protecting their lives, families or possessions. Government is also busy disarming the population with strict and limiting legislation, aimed on the lawful gun owners. However, crime is not committed by persons with lawfully registered fire arms but by people with unlawful fire arms, most of the times Russian AK 47 rifles, or Russian Makarov pistols or arm that have been robbed especially during farm attacks. Nowadays our police force has a problem losing their own fire arms. Recently it was made public in parliament that some 15 000 police weapons just disappeared, and nobody could be held liable for those missing weapons. There is evidence that corrupt police officers sell those weapons to criminals, and there are lots of policemen who are involved in crime themselves, also in farm attacks. They get the right example to follow from their superiors. One former national police commissioner got a sentence of 15 years imprisonment for corruption and bribery, his successor was removed from office on charges of corruption (that same person is now deputy minister of agriculture…!) and the current commissioner is also lifting the eyebrows with her decisions and rumours are that she also will not stay long commissioner. Last week it reported that the small province of Gauteng has nearly 300 police officers I its ranks that have a criminal record.
TAU SA has stated clearly on several occasions that we believe farm killings is no ordinary crime. Other factors have an influence on those killings.
Firstly a climate is created against our farmers. Statements are made from time to time by our ministers and officials where they accuse farmers of certain actions, but if we try to find who the farmer of farmers were who were responsible for those said action, the minister is unable to refer us to an individual. Farmers are accused of having a bad relationship with their workers and that they do not oblige tot labour laws, or mention is made that farm workers are illegal expulsed from the farms they are living on. When confronted with the facts the minister or any other politician is not willing to give an apology to the farming community or have the correct facts being published. Unfortunately our media is not always helpful in correcting the facts, especially our state owned radio and television.
The climate that is created against our farmers started long ago with the Pan Africanist Congress’ slogan “One Settler, One bullet”. Thereafter the ANC hat a youth leader, Peter Mokaba, who had a song “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer”. His successor, Julius Malema, had a song “Kill the farmers, they are rapist”, and the country’s president Jacob Zuma’s personal song is “Bring me my machine gun”. However he stops telling whom he wants to shoot. It will certainly not be his own supporters who protect him against charges of corruption, maladministration or
personal gains from doubtful weapon transactions or the government’s money that is spent on his personal home, Nkandla.
The climate against the farmers is also stimulated by the government’s land reform programs. Accusations are often made that the farmers have stolen the land, which is a historically proven lie. We never stole any land!
We believe that the demand for land probably is one of the big reasons for the farm murders. This implicates that we believe there is a political motive behind those senseless killings. The South African government adopted a land reform policy shortly after 1994. In terms of this land reform it was aimed to have 30 percent of land handed over to blacks in 2014. Persons or communities who had a claim on land currently owned by any other person or instance had to register such a claim before the end of 1998. Lots of those claims were pointed out without any substance by the governments self created land claims court. Nevertheless any now and then we see a new piece of legislation published which would be helpful in getting farmers off their land. After the publication of each new bill we experience a new wave of farm attacks and killings. In 2001 we proposed reliable statistics from an independent institution to government, in which it was pointed out that white South Africans possessed on that time, 2001, only 33 percent of the land in South Africa. The argument that whites posses the biggest part of the country, was no longer valid as far back as fourteen years ago. After 2001 the land reform program was fully implemented by government which means that far more land has been transferred to new black ownership. A new five year term of land claims was opened by government last year.
Unfortunately we have the statistics that in more than 95 percent of the cases where agricultural land was transferred, all agricultural activities came to a standstill meaning that such a farm is not into food production any more.
On the one hand government creates expectations that cannot be met by promising land and welfare. Reality has shown us where those expectations in terms of ownership have been met it did not create welfare. In fact it created even more poverty.
On the other hand government is doing nothing where a revolutionary climate is created by individuals from its own rankings, as I have mentioned earlier. On the contrary, the ANC supports this hate speech against the farmers. TAU SA laid charges of hate speech against the then leader of the ANC Youth League and current leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, Julius Malema, after he promoted the slogan: “Shoot the farmers because they are rapists”. The ANC supported Malema by making itself a party on Malema’s side in the Equality Court. The judge ruled this slogan to be hate speech, and the ANC as an organisation appealed against this ruling. This same Malema is currently rallying a campaign for a so called “economic revolution”, the nationalisation of mines as well as the occupation of land.
In a very violent country as South Africa, to use words like kill, shoot or revolution, is very dangerous and in fact inciting. Our government supports this and that is why we accuse them of a political agenda behind the farm murders.
Ladies and gentlemen, we are prepared to go further. We are on record that we have called the farm killings a part of a bigger strategy against the Afrikaner people, and we call that a genocide. Although the farm killings get more attention than other murders, we have investigators who look into the whole issue of this alleged genocide of the Afrikaner people. They believe that from 1994 up to 20 000 Afrikaners could have been murdered as victims of this genocide. Investigation in this regard is still going on.
We as a representative agricultural union want to be part of the solution against farm murders. We believe that we can help, but we need the support of government by making some small changes to some laws and regulations. However, for more than four years now we cannot even get an appointment with the Minister of Police, or the Commissioner of Police.
Ladies and gentlemen, I actually do not want to be here today. I want to be at home, supporting my farmer members to become even better farmers. I want to be part of a union who’s only goal should be to help the farmers producing food for our nation and region. But is our government does not want to listen to us, we do not have alternatives than to inform the international community about the wrongs that are going on in South Africa, and especially against our farming community.
Last November I attended the United Nations’ Human Rights Commissions forum on Minority Rights in Geneva. The theme was the violence and atrocity crimes against minorities. I gave them the same information I am presenting to you today. The reaction from the South African government was an outraging attack on the UN for permitting us to be part of that forum, and accusing us of not being part of the SA government’s nation building process. However, they did not reply with a single word on the problem of the farm attacks and murders. Are we then wrong in thinking that our government does not have the will to attend to this problem?
I believe that you know our very good neighbour, Mr Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe. You are surely aware of his land grab policy since 2000, during which he chased the white farmers off their land without compensation. Even in Zimbabwe we did not see farm killings as we see it in South Africa. During the whole period of Mugabe regime, only 24 farmers were killed on their farms. Off course those 24 were 24 too much, as we believe that the 1762 in South Africa are 1762 too much.
After sketching this dark picture about what is happening in South Africa, especially in regard of the farming community, the question arises whether there is any hope, or whether there are any solutions to this enormous problem.
At TAU SA we believe there are solutions, but unfortunately solutions that are out of the hands of the farmers themselves. There are two major assets: the first is the positive nature of the South African commercial white farmers. The second is the knowledge and capability of the commercial South African farmer. It is ironically that while the South African government does not show any appreciation for the work the South African farmers as doing in the field of food security, other countries start falling over their feet to invite our farmers to get involved in farming projects in their countries. TAU SA has been involved in an agricultural rebuilding project in the Republic of Georgia, and we are also invited to be participants in similar project in African countries like Nigeria, Nu-Guinea, Angola, Tanzania, Mauritius and even in Canada. We are not prepared to export our farmers to other countries, because we need them ourselves. However we are willing to help anywhere in the world with the expertise we gathered through many years and generations of farming under difficult circumstances. South African farmers have been described as counting between the best farmers of the world. We have a very difficult climate in South Africa with extremes to every side: we have desert end semi-desert areas, in some places we experience severe droughts sometimes, like this year, sometimes we experience severe flooding. Some areas have very fertile land while other areas are known as marginal land. In spite of this all the South African farmer survives and is still able to give food to its 55 million people, and even to export surplus food production and being part of world food security. The South African farmer continues ensuring food security not only for the country, but for our region, in spite of a government who does not give any support to the farmers, who does not give them one cent in any form of subsidy, actually, a government who is busy with its own revolution, politically inspired without looking to the economical realities – a government who is doing its best do get rid of those extraordinary good farmers, even if they have to be silent spectators of our farmers being killed one by one.
What are the solutions?
For the sake of world food security our government has to be convinced of the e necessity to look after their commercial farmers and to take steps to stop those farm murders.
Perhaps the best starting point is for international organisations like the European Union and thereafter the United Nations, to declare these specific farm murders a crime against humanity. The European Unity and many other countries imposed personal sanctions on our neighbour, Mr Robert Mugabe and some of his comrades, on what he did to his nation. We ask you to come and visit us in South Africa, so that we can show you what is really going on.

Perhaps you will see the necessity to impose similar sanctions against our leaders too, because what is happening to our farmers, has a direct influence on all South Africans and to the Southern African region, in which South Africa wants to play a key role.

But for now: when you enjoy your lunch tonight, get yourself a bottle of fine South African red wine, I can recommend any Merlot or Pinotage wine, enjoy the fruitful taste of that lovely wine, just think for a moment that that fine wine has been produced by a wine farmer who has not yet been murdered, and imagine yourself that nice diner without that fruitful wine, because the farmer of that winery has become number 1763 of the farm killings statistics…
We at TAU SA have the slogan: “Have you eaten today? Thank the farmer and the farm worker! No farmer, no food, no future.” And this is applicable to every farmer any place in the world.

issued to the European Parliament in person by Henk van de Graaf, of the Transvaal Agricultural Union in South Africa. http://www.tlu.co.za