October 10, 2012
Over the past fifteen years it has been taken as a given that commercial farmers have subjected to extremely high levels of violent and often murderous attack in South Africa. Many intellectuals and human rights organisations have however been anxious to underplay the import of this problem: The underlying concern apparently being that farmers might end up being regarded as ‘victims’ rather than as ‘perpetrators’. The line generally taken has been that there is no evidence that these attacks are in any way racially or politically motivated.
However, the question has now been raised whether farm attacks are such a unique problem at all. On Friday the South African Institute of Race Relations (SAIRR), a well-respected research organisation, issued a press statement – titled “Farmers not uniquely vulnerable to armed attack” – which claimed that the “number of farm attacks per 100 000 farmers and their families is comparable to the number of criminal attacks per 100 000 people in the general population.” […]
South Africa Today – South Africa News
