Kill the Boer
Page 28
THE SELF-RELIANCE CAMPAIGN
While campaigning for the prioritising of farm murders, the self-reliance campaign is about empowering local communities to look after their own safety better, to be more vigilant and to be more organised. This had to be done not only to respond to farm attacks, but to proactively prevent these attacks from taking place. The campaign entails a variety of activities, including the use of private security and establishing and coordinating community safety networks. The aim is to address these issues in cooperation with the SAPS, not in competition. We have also found that in many local communities, the local SAPS are eager to work together and that friction is often limited only to those cases where the South African government becomes involved at a national level.
As part of this campaign, AfriForum has launched project Nehemiah with the assistance of Major General Roland de Vries. Project Nehemiah is a project aimed at ensuring the safety, peace, prosperity and self-preservation of defenceless people and minority groups in South Africa by actively contributing to the effective fight against violent crime. Together with this, the project integrates different communities and safety structures to fight violent crimes together and thus put more pressure on the government to act against crime.32
‘The criminals clearly have the initiative. They have the intelligence networks. They are properly organised,’ says De Vries.33 As part of Project Nehemiah, AfriForum has undertaken to place a stronger focus on obtaining information that may lead to the proactive prevention of farm attacks, as opposed to only responding to these attacks. ‘I always speak of the below-the-line preparation,’ says De Vries, ‘where the criminals prepare for their crimes, doing their networking, planning and organising where they are invisible. Then for one moment in time, they enter into our world for a few minutes – or in farm attacks, sometimes for up to nine hours, where they commit brutal tortures, but no one knows about it, because they operate below the line. The question then is how do you prepare for this? You can only achieve this if you execute information-driven operations and – this has to be your main driver for the type of operations that we must execute against the brutality that we are confronted with. And, of course, joined to this is proper command and control, seen from a military perspective.’34
This includes the integration of various communication systems, including WhatsApp groups that are already in operation across the country. It is for this purpose that AfriForum has established a central control room to integrate the various communication and information systems to which the organisation has access, to process that information and to take that to local communities for the development of proper counter-strategies.35
PRIVATE SECURITY
The private security industry in South Africa was virtually non-existent until 1985, when SAPS manpower was increasingly withdrawn from suburban police stations to deal with violent crime in townships. Those who could afford to pay for their own security increasingly did so in response to this development. By 1985, about 60 000 security guards worked in South Africa. By 1997, this number had increased to 115 ٣٣١. Private security increasingly started doing the work for which the SAPS had previously been responsible. This includes patrols in suburban areas, protection of private enterprises and storage facilities, and reaction to burglar alarms. Currently there are up to ١٠ ٠٠٠ private security companies in South Africa, employing up to ٥٠٠ ٠٠٠ private security guards.36 This is more than the SAPS and the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) combined.37 Other than that, there are also thousands of unregistered security companies, employing more than 200 000 security guards.38
While the ratio of SAPS officers to the general population has more or less remained the same, the ratio of private security to the general population has not only skyrocketed, but has surpassed that of the SAPS. By 2014, there was one private security guard in South Africa for every 111 members of the public, as opposed to one SAPS officer for every 353 members of the public.39
The increase in private security has greatly contributed to the serious decline in many contact crimes since the year 2000. Cash-in-transit robberies, for example, have declined from 467 in 2006 to 119 in 2014/2015.40
COMMUNITY SAFETY STRUCTURES
A community safety structure is a network of persons within a particular community who are assuming responsibility for their community’s own safety and who undertake crime-prevention actions.41 Community safety structures usually form part of community policing forums (CPFs) – forums in which all role players in a particular policing area, including the SAPS, jointly serve.42 The concept of community structures stems from the European concept of a town watch. However, the notion disappeared with the introduction of professional policing in the 19th century.43 The concept of community policing is, however, still implemented globally, with recorded successes in countries such as Australia, England and Wales.44
The establishment of community safety networks or neighbourhood watches was found to result in a decline of between 16% and 26% in crime in affected areas.45
With the increase in violent crime in South Africa, community safety structures started emerging. A community-involved farm watch system developed during die 1990s, particularly in reaction the increase in farm murders.46
AfriForum regards community safety as its core priority, given that people can never be free if they are not safe. As a result, the civil rights organisation has put considerable effort into establishing a network of community safety structures across the country and to assist these communities with information, training, resources and communication networks. AfriForum has consequently established more than a hundred community safety structures across South Africa and developed a team of full-time employees to coordinate the activities of these structures. Farm attacks are a core priority. Where these community safety structures operate efficiently, a decline in crime in general, but farm attacks in particular, is almost always clearly visible.
The emergence of community safety structures is one of the major reasons why farm murders started to decline from 140 in 2001 to 57 in 2014.47
These structures are, however, dependent on the involvement of volunteers. It is difficult to quantify the decline in crime that results from the establishment of these structures, largely due to the fact that the areas of operation mostly do not coincide with the areas covered by crime reports for SAPS districts. Where community safety structures usually focus on towns and rural areas around these towns, local police stations tend to include in their jurisdiction large informal settlements with high crime rates that are not covered by these structures.48
A consistent theme in the feedback by these structures is, however, that violent crime is on the decline. In those areas where farms are patrolled, farm attacks tend to decline together with other farm-related crimes, such as stock theft. In the farming community surrounding Elliot in the Eastern Cape, stock theft declined by more than 90% in the year after the establishment of community safety structures.
One of the most important lessons that AfriForum has learned in the process is that there is no blueprint for a successful community safety network. Every network has to be developed in a way that fits the needs and preferences of that particular community. The involvement of the right people and the right leadership are key components of the functioning of these structures. On the other hand, certain basic requirements are needed for the effective functioning of such networks. These include proper communication, training, realistic strategies and equipment.49
The author with colleague Guido Urlings at the United Nations Forum
on Minority Issues in 2015, to put farm murders on the agenda.
Photo: AfriForum
‘I told them what had happened and I pointed in the direction where Sue was. They rushed us to Belfast, but they didn’t have any doctors. The nurse took one look and said “There’s nothing we can do here for you, Sir.”’
CHAPTER 22
The question of genocide
In recent y
ears there has been a gradual increase in international reporting on farm murders, often with particular focus on the South African government’s careless attitude towards the problem. Talks of a looming white genocide have also increased dramatically. The international news outlet Reuters reported:
In a country cursed by one of the world’s highest murder rates, being a white farmer makes a violent death an even higher risk … Some of South Africa’s predominantly white commercial farmers go as far as to brand the farm killings a genocide. 1
‘Official statistics on farm attacks are non-existent, due to what human rights groups have described as a “cover-up” by the notoriously corrupt — and potentially complicit — South African government,’ reported Fox News.2
Claims about white genocide have been met with mockery and opposition from mainstream journalists. ‘The term “farm murders” has become fundamentally politicised,’ writes columnist Rebecca Davis. ‘[It has become] associated with false right-wing claims about “white genocide”.’3
‘If you believe there is a white genocide going on you have to believe that every leader in the ANC is a murderer. See the stupidity or not?’ tweeted radio personality Johrné van Huyssteen,4 who tweeted earlier that with 40 million against 3 million (presumably black people against white people), we (presumably white people) would have been ‘moertoe’ (Afrikaans slang word for stuffed-up or destroyed) if there really was a genocide.5
When singer and activist Steve Hofmeyr claimed that white South Africans were being killed ‘like flies’, the story dominated the news. The fact-checking website Africa Check reported that white people’s chances of being murdered were considerably less than those of their black counterparts.6
GENOCIDE WATCH
Gregory Stanton, president of Genocide Watch, conducted a study tour of South Africa in 2014 to investigate claims about genocide. (Genocide Watch is a Washington-based organisation that works closely with the United Nations (UN) and exists to predict, prevent, stop and punish genocide and other forms of mass murder, and seeks to raise awareness and influence public policy concerning potential and actual genocide). Malema’s singing of ‘Dubula iBhunu’ in 2010 prompted Genocide Watch to describe the song as ‘once a revolutionary song, but now an incitement to commit genocide’.7 The matter has largely been ignored by the mainstream media and particularly those who make fun of those who are calling for the recognition of white genocide.
According to Genocide Watch, genocide is a process that develops in ten stages that are predictable but not inexplorable. At each stage, preventive measures can stop it. The process is not linear and stages may occur simultaneously. Logically, later stages must be preceded by earlier stages, but not all stages continue to operate throughout the process.
Genocide Watch stated that although genocide was not underway in South Africa, it had become quite concerned about the escalation of racism in South Africa when Julius Malema was still President of the African National Congress Youth League (ANCYL). The organisation even raised the danger level for genocide in South Africa from polarisation (stage 6) to preparation (stage 7). After Malema was expelled from the ANC, Genocide Watch returned South Africa to polarisation. ‘We remain concerned about his new EFF [Economic Freedom Fighters] party, and remain convinced that his ideology is “Marxist” and “racist”,’ said their statement.
‘The criminals who are inspired to commit hate crimes by Malema’s racist incitement may or may not be Marxists. But their desecrations of bodies are definite signs that the murders are racist hate crimes.’8
Stanton continued:
One of the false uses of Genocide Watch’s model for genocide prediction is the claim by some South Africans, racists in the United States (like the mass killer in Charleston and David Duke), and a few South African expatriates, that South Africa is undergoing a ‘white genocide.’ Genocide Watch has never said ‘white genocide’ is underway in South Africa and in fact South Africa is not even close to stage nine, which would legally be called genocide. Hate crimes fall short of genocide.9
THE TEN STEPS TO GENOCIDE
According to Stanton and Genocide Watch,
there are ten steps on the genocide continuum, namely:
The fact of the matter is that the debate on whether farm murders constitute genocide is misdirected and damaging to the campaign to stop this scourge. Farm murders do not constitute genocide, for the simple reason that the phenomenon does not comply with the definition of genocide.
The problem is that disproving the false claims of genocide leads some to believe that farm murders are not something to be concerned about. The fact that farm murders do not constitute genocide can in no way render this phenomenon less important and should never lead a rational person to conclude that it is not a matter to be concerned about. We find that many argue that farm murders do not constitute genocide in an attempt to discredit those who are concerned about this phenomenon, implicitly concluding that it is not really a problem, simply because it is not genocide. ‘You’re wrong, it’s not genocide. So stop complaining!’ the argument goes.
The Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide (the Genocide Convention) was adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations (UN) on 9 December 1948. The Convention still serves as the highest authority on the crime of genocide. Genocide is defined as follows in article II of the Convention:
In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:
Killing members of the group;
Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;
Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part;
Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;
Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.
Acts that are declared punishable by the Convention include genocide, conspiracy to commit genocide, direct and public incitement to commit genocide, attempt to commit genocide and complicity in genocide.10
The restriction of the crime of genocide to only national, ethnical, racial or religious groups is troublesome. It has been argued that the wording of the Genocide Convention is so restrictive that not one of the genocidal killings committed since its adoption is covered by it,11 and also that potential perpetrators have taken care to victimise only those groups that are not covered by the convention’s definition.12 As it is currently defined, the extermination of groups on the basis of their identity as political, economic, social, linguistic or gender groups (to name a few) cannot be described as genocide, because those groups do not comply with the definition of genocide as defined in the Genocide Convention.
There has been particular emphasis by the UN that economic or professional groups are not and should not be covered by the definition of genocide, as this would be ‘going too far’.13 Also, already in 1947 the Secretariat of the UN warned that ‘protection (against genocide) is not meant to cover a professional or athletic group’.14 It could thus be argued that farm murders cannot constitute genocide, simply because this crime phenomenon deals particularly with members of a professional group. On the other hand, it could be argued that the murder of white farmers could in fact comply with the definition, as it is particularly that ‘part’ of the larger ethnical group (see definition) that is destroyed. The latter could even be backed up with reference to claims by political leaders conflating claims about expropriating white-owned farmland in order to get them off the land with verbal attacks on Afrikaners or Boers, and the singing of songs in which violence towards that ethnic group is romanticised, as was pointed out in Part 2 of this book.
There is, however, a global demand for the broadening of the definition of genocide to include other groups.15
THE TWO ELEMENTS OF GENOCIDE
Stepping away from the protected groups,
it can be said that there are really only two elements of genocide. The first is the physical element (also known as actus reus), and the second is this mental element (also known as mens rea).
The physical element requires one of the acts defined in article II of the Convention to be committed, whether it be killing members of the group, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group, deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part, imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group or forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. In terms of ‘killing members of the group’, it has been said that it needs to be ‘a large number of victims’ for killing to be considered as genocide,16 although the number has not been defined. As a matter of fact, it seems that the actual number of people who have been killed is not that important to the question of whether the act constitutes genocide. The quantitative dimension, as it is called, that genocide involves the intentional destruction of a group ‘in whole or in part’, belongs to the mental and not the material element.17 In other words, the question of how many people have been killed is not as important as the question of whether the perpetrator had the intention to destroy the said group, in whole or in part. The total destruction of the group is not required.18