Kill the Boer

by Ernst Roets

  Photo: Gallo Images/Beeld/Herman Verwey

  ‘Then I heard a bakkie approaching. It had all these lights on the canopy and a trailer on the back. I thought this is it. He’s going to have to run over me. So I sprang into the middle of the road. They braked and they nearly jack-knifed the trailer. The passenger got out. He said: “Jesus, what’s wrong with you?!”’

  CHAPTER 21

  Fighting back

  On a little farm in Limpopo an elderly couple was attacked one evening. (The date of the attack and the details on where the farm is situated were omitted in the source.) The farmer was 83 and his wife in her 70s. The house and the security systems in place were said by observers to resemble Fort Knox, with guard dogs, security walls, special security doors, floodlights, a panic room and all. Even the doors did not have hinges and could not be kicked out.

  One morning, the farmer got up at 05:00 as usual, switched off the alarms and floodlights and called the dogs in. On this day, the dogs were not there, so he turned around to get his firearm. Just as he touched the door, three men grabbed him from behind. He screamed for his wife to run to the panic room. As he scuffled with the attackers (he was a fairly big man), his wife ran to get the double-barrelled shotgun. Quite dramatically, she threw it to him before she ran to the panic room.

  He started firing, quickly killing one of the attackers. The second attacker then started hacking at him with a panga (machete) as the third attacker ran away. The farmer was struck 14 times on the head and back. He was then also stabbed ten times with a knife. Soaked in blood, he eventually dropped to the floor.

  His wife, safely locked away in the house, was listening to the events unfolding outside. She could hear her husband screaming with pain, followed by a complete silence. Outside, he was still alive, but lying flat on his back, half-blind from the blood gushing over his face.

  The third attacker, who had gone to the back of the house to break open the back door, then came running back in the direction of the farmer.

  At that moment, the farmer looked up and saw the man running in his direction, picked up the shotgun and fired away, killing him instantly.

  His wife remained locked in the panic room, believing that her husband had been killed, while he lay outside, believing that he was taking his last breaths. The second attacker spent some time in the house and eventually left. The next morning, the couple’s daughter arrived on the scene and found her father miraculously still breathing. He was immediately rushed to hospital.

  Upon investigation of the scene, the blood-covered clothes of the second attacker were found in a cupboard, presumably because he had exchanged his clothes for clean clothing. In his pocket, the local South African Police Service (SAPS) officers found a flash disc that was filled with pictures of the house – from the outside as well as the inside. They also found a folded piece of paper containing a timetable of the couple’s routine movements.1

  This particular farmer and his wife managed to survive (although just barely), because they had taken a long list of precautionary measures. But, as it turns out, many of these precautionary measures proved to be insufficient to prevent an attack.

  ‘I describe it as fourth generation warfare,’ says retired Major General Roland de Vries, who became involved with AfriForum’s community safety campaigns in 2017. ‘These are people who operate in gangs. If you study their conduct and their tactics, it borders on the tactics of revolutionary warfare and a low-scale insurgency warfare in many ways … We need to look at the principles of counter-revolutionary warfare, to apply it in the type of strategies that we need to develop and the types of operational concepts that we need to execute on grassroots level.’ 2

  SAPS IN CRISIS

  A very concerning reality in South Africa is the degree of the crisis in which the SAPS finds itself. The crisis is manifested on a variety of levels.

  The physical and emotional state of the SAPS has been described as ‘catastrophic’, among other things due to the fact that 89% of the active members of the SAPS who are treated for psychiatric conditions suffer from depression.3

  During 2015, a total of 88 members of the SAPS were killed during the course of their duties. The African National Congress (ANC) responded that a heavier sentence should be instituted against such crimes, said ANC Member of Parliament (MP) Jerome Maake in 2016. Police murders should actually be declared a crime against the entire country – like high treason. When such people are arrested, they should be kept in separate prisons and get separate food and clothing. It cannot be treated like and ordinary murder, Maake added.4

  SAPS members at grassroots level are usually armed with 9 mm pistols, and often find themselves confronted by criminals with AK-47s.5 Their bulletproof vests were more than 20 years old, for example, but the material actually lasts only for six years, said one police officer.6 There no longer are specialist units in the SAPS, but criminals are becoming increasingly specialised, said Ian Cameron, Head of Community Safety at AfriForum.7

  The office of the Minister of Police disclosed in 2017 that the SAPS has a shortage of about 3 000 police members.8 However, lack of resources appears not to be a crisis when it needs to be utilised for political purposes. In March 2017, the news broke that the office of the Chief Justice had been broken into and robbed of 15 computers that contained the personal information of 250 of South Africa’s judges. John Steenhuisen, MP for the DA, reacted on Twitter, saying: ‘My money’s on [Minister of State Security, David] Mahlobo and the kak-handed SSA [State Security Agency]. Signal jammer, imaginary social media villains and inept break ins. Intimidation of judiciary.’ Later, Steenhuisen was called out of a committee meeting in Parliament to be informed by four SAPS officers who had driven more than 1 400 kilometres (870 miles) from Pretoria that Mahlobo had filed charges against him as a result of his tweet. Steenhuisen described it as an intimidation tactic and a blatant waste of SAPS resources.9

  It was disclosed in December 2017 as another example of wasting of SAPS resources for political purposes, that a police unit was watching over a private, yet abandoned house that belonged to Mahlobo 24 hours a day for three years. ‘We know we’re not supposed to work here,’ said one of the police officers who asked to remain anonymous. He explained that they were forced to look after the building by management.10

  The SAPS is increasingly called in to deal with service-delivery protests and violent unrests as a result of political issues. ‘Few commentators have sufficient understanding of, or sympathy for, the impossible situation in which the police are being placed,’ says Frans Cronje, CEO of the Insitute of Race Relations (IRR). ‘They have neither the numbers nor proper riot policing resources to keep up with what the politicians are demanding of them.’ Cronje points out that a General in the SAPS confided to him that they (the SAPS) ‘are not Plan B to govern the country’:11

  A police general explained how every time his officers are deployed to quell one of these violent uprisings, he hears the same story. The politicians made wild promises, failed to keep them, and all too often misappropriated the funds meant for the issue in question. The community sought to complain, but the relevant local, provincial or national political leadership either ignored them or promised to follow up but never did.12

  What is more alarming is the increased involvement of members of the SAPS in criminal activities. This is evident from grassroots level, right up to top management. Since the appointment of George Fivaz as National Commissioner of Police in 1995, South Africa has had six other National Police Commissioners. Of the seven, at least three have been accused of corruption while in office.

  Vuyo Mhaga, spokesperson for the Minister of Police, shrugged off concerns about the repeated suspension or disciplining of members of the top management of the SAPS by saying that people would do well to remember that those people were clean when they were appointed and that the scandals only came later.13

  A 2011 report by the IRR on the extent to which the SAPS is involved in perpetrating criminal violen
ce found that allegations of SAPS officers’ involvement in serious and violent crimes are not simply isolated incidents, but a pattern of criminal behaviour. It was found that SAPS criminality particularly includes involvement with violent crimes and that low conviction rates of implicated SAPS officers suggest that the SAPS do not take the problem seriously.14

  In 2013 the SAPS it was disclosed that 1 448 serving SAPS officers had criminal records. This boils down to 747,6 SAPS officers with criminal records for every 100 000 SAPS officers. Table 19 indicates the crimes for which the officers had criminal records, as well as an indication of the number of police officers per 100 000 who were found to have been convicted of that that particular crime. (The ratio was calculated considering that the SAPS had 193 692 serving members in the year 2014/2015.)

  Table 19: Convicted SAPS personnel by crime category: 201315

  The acting Deputy National Commissioner for Human Resources, Lieutenant-General Nkrumah Mazibuko, said to Parliament that action would be taken within a year to clean out the SAPS’s ranks. Pressured to provide a time frame, a ‘temporary date’ of June 2014 was given. By July 2014, the newly appointed Police Minister, Nathi Nhleko, conceded that all 1 448 SAPS members with criminal records remained in active duty.16

  The independent criminologist Liza Grobler, who conducted an enquiry into SAPS corruption, found that out of 892 policemen who faced criminal charges for corruption in 2012 (a drop in a far wider ocean), only 22 (2,5%) had been suspended.17

  In a three-year period, the Independent Police Investigative Directorate (IPID) investigated nearly 130 criminal complaints against the SAPS in Khayelitsha only, half of which had been lodged in 2012.18

  The 2013/2014 annual report by the SAPS revealed that 5 578 disciplinary actions had been instituted against their own members over one year. In 3 435 cases some or other sanction, ranging from a verbal warning to a fine, was issued, and in more than 500 of these incidents the member in question was dismissed.19

  A 2015 follow-up on the IRR’s 2011 report found that there had been no significant decline in the extent of SAPS criminality and that there had been extensive SAPS involvement in perpetrating serious violent crimes continues. It was found that SAPS criminality is not a series of isolated incidents and that the SAPS’s efforts fall far short of what is required to stamp out the problem. The report continues:

  The failure of police efforts – despite their extent – is evidence of the extent to which the police may have been infiltrated by criminal gangs and syndicates. What is expected is that the police infiltrate criminal gangs. In South Africa criminal gangs have infiltrated the police.20

  It was furthermore found that SAPS officers often use their policing powers, as well as official equipment, to perpetrate crimes.21

  The Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD) has indicated that more than 2 000 serious criminal cases involving SAPS members had been reported to it every year since 2007. The ICD investigated 720 deaths involving the SAPS in the 2011/2012 financial year and found evidence of criminality in 162 (22%) of the cases.22

  These findings are consistent with what I have been told by SAPS officers. One officer who had been operating in a location determined by the SAPS to be a farm murder hotspot told me that he became concerned when he noticed that farm attacks in their jurisdiction were almost always committed during the shifts of particular officers. He was convinced that some of his fellow SAPS members were not only complicit by not fulfilling their duties, despite them knowing when and where these attacks would take place, but also that some of them were actively involved in some of these attacks.

  In the 2012/2013 financial year civil claims against the SAPS had already exceeded R14 billion ($1,12 billion) for cases of assault, accidents, shootings and damage to property.23

  In 2017 data released by the SAPS to AfriForum indicated that at least 7 829 guns were lost or stolen between 2009 and 2014, and that some if these weapons had been used to commit violent crimes.24

  The involvement of prison wardens in the escaping of prisoners is also a matter of major concern. In April 2016, two prison wardens were arrested for the escape of sixteen prisoners from the Sun City prison in Johannesburg. One of the prisoners had to face trial for the murder of TV personality Johann Botha (53), who was killed together with his friend Werner Perchtold (76) in a Johannesburg restaurant.25 When three alleged farm attackers who were accused of murder and rape escaped from police custody in the North West town of Sannieshof in June 2017, a local councillor said that the only way in which they could have been able to escape, was with the help of outsiders.26 In fact 37 correctional officers were charged with and found guilty of corruption in the 2016/2017 financial year (up from 34 in the previous year), while 118 were fired during 2015/2016.27

  A 2011 study by the Human Sciences Research Council (HSRC)found that about 66% of the adult population of South Africa believed that corruption was a widespread problem in the SAPS and that only 41% of the respondents had some level of trust in the SAPS.28 Even when there is a decrease in crime, public trust in the SAPS seems to be dwindling.

  According to Statistics South Africa’s 2016/2017 Victims of Crime Survey South African households’ satisfaction with the SAPS dropped from 64,2% in 2011 to 58,8% in 2015/2016 and 57,3% in 2016/2017. In 2011, 43,5% of people said that they saw members of the SAPS at least once a day. This dropped to 33,1% in 2015/2016 and increased slightly to 33,8% in 2016/2017. There also appears to be a decreased sense of approval when it comes to the agricultural community. While 95% of murders and 89,5% of incidents of vehicle theft were reported to the SAPS in 2015/2016, reporting of the theft of fresh agricultural products was only 17,3% and that of stock theft only 29,3%. Reporting of assault to the SAPS declined from 93,3% in 2012 to 48,6% in 2015/2016. On top of that, there is also a drop in public trust of the justice system as a whole, but particularly with reference to the treatment of perpetrators by the courts, where approval dropped from 64,5% in 2011 to 52,3% in 2015/2016.29 In 2011, 36,9% of households felt safe to walk around in their own neighbourhoods at night. This figure dropped to 30,7% by 2015/2016. By 2016/2017 this figure dropped even further to 30%.30

  A DOUBLE STRATEGY

  The initial prioritisation of farm attacks by the South African government, followed by a process of deprioritisation, has been illustrated in Chapter 17. In the absence of farm attacks being regarded as a priority crime, the question arises how local communities and civil society can fight back to curb the scourge of farm attacks.

  As tax-paying citizens, we can expect safety and security to be a core priority for the government, and an argument can be made that fighting crime is not the role of the community but the role of the state. On the other hand, it could equally be argued that it serves no purpose to sit back and wait for the South African government to come to the table to address these attacks while people are attacked on a daily basis.

  It is for this reason that AfriForum’s reaction to farm attacks is based on a dual strategy. On the one hand, the South African government has to be held accountable for the fact that the safety of its farmers is not regarded as a priority. This is referred to as the pressure campaign. On the other hand, local communities need to be organised to look after their safety more effectively. This is known as the self-reliance campaign.

  The pressure campaign includes a wide variety of activities, including protest action, wreath-laying ceremonies, conferences, legal action, stakeholder engagement, petitions and international liaison. The self-reliance campaign also includes a variety of activities, centred around one major theme: community involvement. The aim of this campaign is not only to encourage people to look after their own safety more effectively and to be more vigilant, but particularly to organise communities into community safety networks and to establish regional, provincial and national coordination between these networks.

  THE PRESSURE CAMPAIGN

  The purpose of the pressure campaign is to hold the South African government accounta
ble. The government has failed significantly in its duties to keep tax-paying citizens safe. This is particularly evident with regard to farm murders. In so far as the South African government fails to recognise the severity of farm murders, it also fails not only to protect that particular portion of its tax base, but also to secure food security for the population as a whole.

  Of particular importance in this regard is the goal to internationalise the campaign against farm murders. While we regard local protest action as a fundamental part of the campaign against farm murders, even if only to create a track record of the South African government’s disregard for the crisis, our experience is that international campaigns tend to lead to better results. The South African government and the ruling ANC have been benefitting from high levels of international approval, particularly as a result of their struggle credentials. The complete disregard for the safety of South African farmers does not suit the narrative that the ruling party is one that has the interest of all South Africans at heart, and therefore we have found that the African National Congress (ANC) is particularly sensitive to international criticism or commentary that contradicts that narrative. As a result, we find that the South African government is prepared to take deliberate steps to prevent organisations such as AfriForum from speaking on international platforms about these issues. When we do, we find that international pressure tends to influence what the ANC refers to as the so-called balance of forces in favour of the concerns that we believe need to be addressed. The result is that doors that have previously been shut tend to open.

  When I attended a UN conference on minority rights in 2014, I was approached by a representative of the South African government before it was my turn to address the gathering. She wanted to know why we felt that it was necessary to take our campaign to an international platform. ‘Why don’t you just talk with the Department of Police?’ she asked. I explained to her we had made dozens of attempts to discuss this issue with the department and that it always fell on deaf ears. Frustrated, she said that she would have to take the matter up with her superiors. ‘This creates a problem for us,’ she said, referring to the Department of International Relations and Cooperation (DIRCO). ‘The fact that the Department of Police is not talking to you in South Africa, implies that we have to manage the situation outside of South Africa.’31