by Ernst Roets
On the same day, we formally notified the Tshwane Metro Police of our intention to march against farm murders. Two days later, I sent another email to the Minister’s spokesperson, asking for a response. He still did not reply. After another three days, I sent the following text message to Mnisi’s cellphone: ‘Please confirm whether you have received my e-mails last week. Regards, Ernst Roets, AfriForum’. Mnisi responded with: ‘Yes I have, we are trying to secure a date for a meeting. Will keep u posted. Rgds, Zweli.’
On 8 November I sent another email to Mnisi, informing him that we were still waiting for his feedback and a confirmation letter that they would receive our memorandum on the prioritising of farm attacks. In the event that he did not understand the extent of the applicable legislation, I also explained that the Minister’s refusal to provide such a confirmation letter would not render the march illegal and that we would continue with the march to the Minister’s office, regardless of whether such a letter was provided or not. In the case of a refusal to accept the memorandum, we would then read the memorandum aloud in the street outside the Minister’s office. Again, Mnisi did not respond.
On 12 November I sent another text message to his cellphone: ‘I sent you an e-mail requesting a confirmation letter that you will accept our memorandum on the 1st of December. Regards, Ernst Roets, AfriForum.’ He did not reply. The day thereafter, I sent him another text message: ‘Please respond to my request for a confirmation letter for accepting of a memorandum on 1 December.’ Mnisi responded with: ‘I will speak to the Minister & revert. I cud not arrange meeting with u last week because of other engagements in Parliament.’ Mnisi did not revert as promised.
The following day I sent another email to Mnisi, again requesting a confirmation letter. Mnisi again neglected to respond. Five days later, on 19 November, I called Mnisi on his cellphone. He did not take the call, but responded with a text message, asking me to text him.
On that same day, I called the Tshwane Metro Police about our notice to march. The officer informed me that there was nothing wrong with our application and that the march would be legal, but that we would need to have a routine logistics meeting, as required by the applicable legislation.
On 20 November I sent Mnisi another text message: ‘Can we expect a confirmation letter for our march on 1 December, as requested? Ernst Roets, AfriForum.’ Mnisi did not respond. Shortly after texting Mnisi, I followed up with the Tshwane Metro Police. The officer told me that they had received a phone call from ‘top management’ minutes before I called them. Top management had instructed them that the march could not continue and that it would have to be declared an illegal gathering. I asked what the reasons for this instruction were, to which the officer responded that no reasons had been provided. I then suggested that we postpone the march, but the officer told me that I had misunderstood what she was trying to convey: It was not the date or the place of the march that was problematic, it was the march itself. I was told that AfriForum would not be allowed to march against farm murders ‘until further notice’.
The following day, our attorneys served a legal notice on the Minister of Police, as well as the City of Tshwane Metropolitan Police, indicating that the conduct of the Minister of Police amounted to an abuse of power and a violation of our rights and that we intended taking the matter to court should an adequate written response not be provided by the close of business on that day.28 Mnisi responded, denying that he had ever said that he intended to prevent the march from taking place ‘at any cost’.
On 27 November I met Touch Mashaba, a representative in the office of the Member of the Mayoral Committee (MMC) for Police in Pretoria. Mashaba bluntly refused to give me his name and I was only able to obtain it through other methods after the meeting. During the meeting I repeatedly asked him to provide me with reasons why the march could not continue. He was not able to provide answers, nor was he able to explain why the march could not take place at a later stage. I explained to him that AfriForum had a clean track record of peaceful public gatherings, but this was not sufficient. Mashaba asked me whether I would be interested in meeting with the National Police Commissioner to discuss our concerns about farm attacks, to which I responded with great interest. Mashaba then stated that such a meeting could only be arranged on the precondition that we cancel all plans to organise a march against farm attacks. I responded that it was already too late, as the march had already been marketed and was scheduled to take place in four days. Mashaba then stated that in the event of such a march taking place, AfriForum could be assured of the fact that a meeting with the National Police Commissioner would be out of the question. This was in line with Mnisi’s earlier statement that a meeting with the Minister of Police could only take place on the condition that no protest march take place. This was, of course, a blatant abuse of power.
Mashaba said that he would contact me if he believed that there was a need for further communication, which he never did.
We went to the Gauteng High Court on 29 November 2012. The Court found that no fault could be found with our intended march and that the march could continue as planned.
The following day (the day before the march), I finally met with the Tshwane Metro Police, as prescribed by law. The panel unanimously agreed that no fault could be found with our intended march. I was told that the reason why the march had been declared illegal prior to the court proceedings was as a result of the interference of the Department of Police. The planned march was then also ‘preliminarily’ declared to be legal by the Tshwane Metro Police, pending any further objections by the Minister of Police. By closing time that day I had not received any further correspondence.
On 1 December, the march continued as planned. About five hundred people, including dozens of people who had either been attacked on farms, or whose loved one had been murdered, arrived in Church Square, in Pretoria’s city centre. From there we would march to the Minister of Police’s office. We were, however, disturbed to find that no police officers had been dispatched to look after the safety of the marchers and to regulate traffic as we proceeded through the city centre. This was required by law. We managed to find two police officers in the area who were unaware of the march and thought that we were organising an illegal gathering. After I had showed them the court order, they agreed to assist in regulating traffic, although this was grossly insufficient.
The Minister refused to accept our memorandum and we had to read the memorandum in the street, before proceeding back to our gathering point.
Two days after the march, I saw that I had been sent an email on the evening before the march by senior superintendent William Mohlala of the Tshwane Metro Police. Mohlala informed me that the march would still be regarded as an illegal gathering because we had allegedly never informed the Department of Police of our plans to protest.
In a subsequent complaint that we filed at the office of the Public Protector, I stated that:
I regard the events that led to and that followed on 1 December 2012 as a series of violations of our rights, especially the rights to freedom of expression, the right to protest and the right to fair administrative action. Furthermore, it is clear to me that the conduct of the Minister of Police, through his representatives, amounted to maladministration, abuse of power and even blackmailing. I am afraid that our plans to march on an issue of crime has been politicised by the Minister of Police to such an extent that active steps were taken to prevent us from exercising our constitutional rights. Given the circumstances, it is not farfetched to conclude that the Minister is not only indifferent to South Africa’s farm murder catastrophe, but that his department is prepared to abuse its power to prevent the public from speaking out about it.29
INTERVENTION AT THE UNITED NATIONS
In November 2015 AfriForum participated at the United Nations’ (UN) Forum on Minority Issues to raise awareness about the plight of South African farmers. The conference was organised by the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Minority Issues, among other thi
ngs with the aim of determining the extent to which minority communities’ rights are respected and protected by their respective governments. The conference was also attended by Henk van de Graaf of the Transvaal Agricultural Union of South Africa (TAU SA) and André Fourie of the FF Plus.
In a strange twist of tragic irony, a senior representative of the South African government was able to speak before it was my turn to address the conference. The representative aggressively questioned the mere fact that I was allowed to speak at an event like this, claiming that AfriForum only speaks for a minority and that our concerns should therefore not be taken seriously. She added that those who call for the prioritising of farm attacks are only doing so because they intend to ‘bring back apartheid’ and that it is a racist attempt to categorise crime according to racial lines. In a strange contradiction, she then stated that farm attacks should not receive priority treatment, because the South African government is not prepared to racialise its crime prevention strategies, but also that we need to remember that many black people are also attacked and killed during farm attacks.
I was allowed the opportunity to speak the next morning. That evening, I had to rewrite my prepared remarks in order to respond to what the South African representative had said. The following day, it was my turn, so I lashed back:
I feel unfortunately that it is more important for me to respond to some of the statements that were made yesterday by the South African representative regarding this issue … The South African government is very inconsistent with its approach, because it’s easy for the South African government to prioritise the poaching of rhinoceroses. It’s easy for the South African government to dispatch more police officials to black townships where there is a high crime rate, and we support that. It’s easy for the South African government to draw up a counter-strategy when police officials are being killed in disproportionate numbers. In South Africa it’s twice as dangerous to be a farmer than to be a police official, but when we talk about farm murders, then all of a sudden the response is that is doesn’t make sense to prioritise these attacks.
The reality is that farmers in South Africa are being attacked and killed in complete disproportionate numbers and that these attacks are committed in a very brutal fashion, that many of them are subject to hours of torture. Attie Potgieter, for example was stabbed 151 times with a garden fork while his two-year-old girl watched. Johan Strydom was tied to a pickup truck and dragged over a dirt road until his organs burst. Annatjie van Rooyen was still alive when she was stuck in a deep-freezer. Roger van Parys had a samurai sword pushed down his throat and still we get no reaction from the South African government regarding these attacks. What we do however get – and it is on record – is that some of the victims have been mocked and ridiculed by representatives of the South African government. As a matter of fact, the spokesperson for the Minister of Police issued a press statement saying that it is only publicity stunts when the victims call for the prioritising of these attacks. Mr. Chairperson, I have to go back and report to our constituency what is being done about this problem and I come here to find the South African representative saying that the people who want these crimes to be prioritised are only doing so because we want to bring apartheid back. I find it offensive and I wish to state for the record that it is not the case and I wish to call on the representatives here to take note of this problem.30
Earlier that year, the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO) took deliberate steps to prevent AfriForum from being granted special consultative status with the non-governmental organisation (NGO) Branch of the United Nations (UN). While attending a session in New York to register AfriForum at the said UN forum, I discussed AfriForum’s application to be granted such status with the newly-appointed representative of the South African government. The representative told me that he had gone through AfriForum’s application and that there was nothing wrong with it. He even told me not to worry, as the South African government had great influence over the committee. He then mentioned China, Sudan and Cuba as some of the countries that are in alliance with the South African government. Shortly before I was called to respond to questions about our application again, the representative approached me, visibly angry. He told me that his superiors at DIRCO just called him from Pretoria. He was instructed to use his influence over the panel to prevent AfriForum from being granted consultative status at the UN. The reason for this was that AfriForum is ‘too arrogant’ to be allowed to speak to the UN about South African affairs. The representative even went as far as to tell me that he likes me personally and that I should not take it personally. ‘It’s not me,’ he said. ‘It’s my instructions from government.’ He then told me that he had already approached South Africa’s allies and that he had planted some questions that would be posed to me in order to derail our application to be granted consultative status. ‘Whatever I ask you, I am going to tell you to put it in writing. So it doesn’t matter if you answer the questions here or not. You will need to go back and answer in writing and come back next year,’ he said. The representative then gave two reasons to motivate the claim that AfriForum was ‘too arrogant’. The one was AfriForum’s objection to the fact that the then Zimbabwean President, Robert Mugabe, had been invited to the inauguration of former President Jacob Zuma. The other was AfriForum’s campaign against farm murders. The fact that AfriForum is discussing farm murders at meetings of the UN was regarded as an act of arrogance that should not be tolerated. Before walking away, he gave me one piece of advice if we wanted our application to be successful. ‘You must just stop talking too much. You talk too much.’31
Sue was shot three times. The first was in the bedroom. The last two shots were shot into her right eye. ‘Her nose wasn’t broken, but her whole face was as if someone had beaten her up, but that was because of the gunshot, I think. From here up to here, it looked as if she had been pulled through a cheese shredder,’ Robert said, holding his one hand up to his neck and the other hand at his lower body. It was as if her skin had been ripped off. They just dragged her over the gravel.
CHAPTER 19
Investigating farm attacks
(With recognition to Nantes Kelder, former head of AfriForum’s Trauma Unit.)
Over the years, AfriForum has been inundated with complaints from victims of farm attacks who believe that their cases were not dealt with sufficiently by their local South African Police Service (SAPS). It has become clear that negligent investigations are not limited to isolated cases, but occur on a regular basis.
In the study conducted by Lorraine Claasen of the AfriForum Research Institute (ANI) as part of her research for this book, 50% of victims complained that they were not satisfied with the way in which their cases had been investigated by the SAPS.
Complaints vary and include the following:
Crime scenes were not properly protected;
A large number of police officers were present at the scene, simply out of curiosity;
Statements were taken incorrectly or poorly;
Statements were taken days or even weeks after the attack;
Forensic evidence was not handled properly and according to prescriptions;
Pieces of evidence were left behind on the scene;
Suspects were taken back to the crime scene to be identified by the victims (a practice in violation of identification procedures);
Information provided to the police was not followed up properly;
No feedback to victims;
Poor response times; and
Instructions of prosecutors in dockets were not adhered to.1
Some of these cases are elaborated on in the pages that follow.
BLOODY TROUSERS IN A POLICE VEHICLE2
Roelof van der Westhuizen was attacked on his farm near Rustenburg in North West on 28 June 2006. During the attack, he was beaten several times with an eight pound hammer and stabbed with an object. Van der Westhuizen’s hands and feet were tied behind his back and he was left f
or dead by his attackers. The attack took place at around 13:30 and he was only found at 18:25 by his wife, Andriëtte. By that stage he had already lost a lot of blood.
During the investigation of the attack, Andriëtte found a pair of trousers on the scene that did not belong to her husband. It was soaked in blood. The trousers were identified by their neighbours as belonging to one of their workers. Andriëtte handed the trousers to the investigating officer in the matter on the same day. On 7 July 2006, more than a week after the incident, the investigating officer in the matter visited Van der Westhuizen. Van der Westhuizen noticed that the pair of trousers that had been handed over to the police as evidence was still lying in the back of the police vehicle. The evidence was not packaged as forensic evidence and was also not signed into the appropriate register.
The SAPS also never seized the objects with which Van der Westhuizen was attacked – a knife, pipe and a hammer – and they remained in the possession of the victim. After further usage of those items on the farm, the evidential value was lost. Several investigating officers worked on the matter and the suspect was released on bail. The matter was later scrapped from the roll because the docket was allegedly not in court. After several complaints, a warrant was issued for the arrest of the accused, but he was never arrested.
In 2008, more than two years after the attack, basic investigative work on the docket had not been done. A prosecutor made the following note in the docket: ‘I think the complainant has reason for complaint. Several things have to be investigated.’3
Van der Westhuizen never received feedback from the SAPS and the matter was never settled.