The African e-Journals Project has digitized full text of articles of eleven social science and humanities journals. This item is from the digital archive maintained by Michigan State University Library. Find more at: http://digital.lib.msu.edu/projects/africanjournals/ Available through a partnership with Scroll down to read the article. Article A Failure of Rural Protection1 Bronwen Manby South Africa's white farmers are also under attack from a government in thrall to millions of landless voters, many of whom say - as do their Zimbabwean brothers - that whites 'stole' their land. This is of course a ludicrous assertion. When whites came to southern Africa, there was little if any systematic cultivation and certainly no agricultural industry to speak of. Western farming methods allowed South Africa to become one of the world's six food-exporting countries. Yet under the new government, assaults on farmers, and their property rights and their very future are increasing.2 Amdng employment sectors, the 1994 change of government in South Africa has had perhaps the most profound effect on the working environment of the commercial farmer. While those speaking for farmworkers and residents see far too little change in practice, farm owners and managers have had to adapt from a situation in which - after the land had been taken by force from South Africa's black peoples - they received privileged treatment from government, including hefty subsidies and protective tariffs, to one in which handouts and cheap finance have been largely ended,' labour legislation extended to the agricultural sector, and trade tariffs progressively cut. At the same time, the protection of the state security forces and the use of state violence to ensure white control of the land has been exchanged for a government commitment to land redistribution and laws protecting farm residents from arbitrary eviction. The depth of the change in attitude that has been required is illustrated by the results of a referendum conducted by the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU) in 1990, in which 94.52 per cent of the 11,895 farmers who participated - representing close to 20 per cent of all South Africa's white farmers at the time - voted 'yes' to the question 'are you in favour of farmland being preserved for white ownership?' (Cited in Segal 1991:16). Today, not even TAU openly defends this view. TRANSFORMATION 49 (2002) ISSN 0258-7696 86 A Failure of Rural Protection The land invasions promoted by the government of Zimbabwe over the last two years have, moreover, concentrated the minds of farmers (as well as government and farmworkers) on the land issue in South Africa. While there have been no government-backed land invasions in South Africa along the lines of those in Zimbabwe, and the African National Congress (ANC) is committed to an orderly process of redistribution, many farm owners, especially in areas adjoining the overcrowded former homelands, complain of a 'creeping' invasion of individual farms through methods such as the breaking down of fences in order to graze stock, or a rapid increase in the number of people living on a farm without the permission of the landowner. Meantime, the government's official land reform programme, based on restitution, tenure reform and redistribution is mired in bureaucratic delays. Land rights organisations openly talk of Zimbabwe- style invasions if land redistribution is not hastened. In July 2001, the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC) capitalised on this discontent, by 'selling' plots of land at Bredell, near Kempton Park, Gauteng, for R25 each. The government obtained a court order for the eviction of the hundreds of people desperate for a place of their own who rushed to take advantage of this initiative (Cousins 2000). While robustly declaring that 'disrespect for the law cannot be tolerated', amidst scenes of demolition uncomfortably reminiscent of apartheid-era forced removals, the ANC rapidly made commitments to speed up land redistribution.3 'Farm Attacks' Most pressing of all farmers' concerns are what have come to be known as 'farm attacks', violent crime against white farmers. Over the last decade, there has been an increasing incidence of violent crime against the owners and managers of commercial farms or smallholdings and their families: according to statistics collected by police, between January 1997 and December 1999, 356 people on farms or smallholdings were killed by intruders.4 Because of a moratorium on crime statistics, figures for 2000 were not available as of August 2001, though in an April report to parliament police indicated that the number of murders had decreased slightly from 1999.5Farmowners' organisations claim that more than 1000 people have died in such circumstances since 1991.6 (These statistics include the deaths of some black people killed in the course of crime committed against white farmsteads, but excludes most crime against black farmworkers). Many farm owners and some of the representatives of the commercial agricultural unions believe that the motive behind these crimes 87 Bronwen Manby is explicitly racial or political, a conspiracy aimed at driving white people off commercial farmland. At their most extreme, these views lead to a belief that the government is training former members of MK or APLA to assassinate white farm owners, possibly even under the direction of some shadowy international force. There are repeated assertions from the Transvaal Agricultural Union and others of the 'military precision' with which these crimes are carried out - even though others who have investigated farm killings note rather that in many cases their hallmark is extreme amateurishness, with evidence frequently left at the scene. From the perspective of many black South Africans the interpretation of violent crime against farm owners is equally clear, but opposite, tending to attribute the 'farm attacks' to longstanding ill treatment of farm labour. Commenting on reports of a farm owner who forced his workers to share accommodation with pigs, the ANC issued a statement that it is an open secret that some of the brutal attacks on farmers are revenge attacks by farmworkers who have been brutalised by their employers. It is unfortunate that sometimes it is innocent farmers who pay the price for the actions of their racist colleagues.7 Just as some farm owners and their representatives are convinced that violent attacks against whites living on farms are part of a conspiracy, so farm residents often believe that attempts to organise private security or commando protection for farms are throw-backs to the 'third force' of the 1980s and early 1990s, covert action by the previous government to promote violence among black communities and assassinate black leaders. This view is reinforced by the fact that in some areas, among those employed as private security are ex-members of South Africa's more notorious apartheid security units, including the 32 and Koevoet battalions deployed in Namibia and Angola. There is, in fact, no substantive evidence for a coordinated campaign of intimidation to drive whites off the land. Equally, there is no evidence of a direct correlation between brutality towards farmworkers or evictions of farm residents and violent crime against farm owners. Studies carried out or commissioned by the SAPS, including studies based on interviews with those convicted for crimes committed during 'farm attacks' have repeatedly concluded that the main motive for crimes committed by intruders is criminal, especially the theft of firearms, cash, and vehicles.8 In the majority of cases violence was used to achieve another purpose rather than for its own sake. A small minority of cases can be linked to direct revenge for ill-treatment. There seems little reason to distinguish in terms of motive 88 A Failure of Rural Protection between crime committed against peri-urban smallholdings in particular and crime committed in neighboring suburbs; especially since gratuitous violence is a feature of much South African crime, wherever committed. Nevertheless, despite the findings of their own research that the motives for violent crime against farm owners are largely criminal, the police and the army continue to use the terminology of 'farm attacks', reinforcing the idea that there is a military or terrorist basis for the crimes, rather than a criminal one - and thereby clouding analysis of possible solutions to the violence. Assaults on farm residents The high visibility of violent crime against farm owners - a visibility actively promoted by farmers' organisations - contrasts with the near invisibility of violent crime against farm residents, whether crime committed by other black people or in particular by farm owners. At intervals, a particularly shocking case in which a farm owner has abused a farm resident or worker will reach the South African media, such as the March 2001 murder of a black trespasser, initially believed to have been shot and later found to have been beaten to death, for which members of the Pietersburg rugby team were charged.9 But the police have commissioned no studies of the kind carried out in relation to farm attacks, nor collected statistics relating to violent crime against farm residents by farm owners. Farm owners' representatives maintain the 'few bad apples' thesis, arguing that the bulk of farmworkers have good relations with farmers. Apparently supporting this view, an independent study commissioned by the KwaZulu- Natal Agricultural Union (KWANALU) found that less than seven per cent of farmworkers characterised their relationship with the farm owner as 'fairly' or 'very bad' (Johnson and Schlemmer. 1998). But other research among migrant farmworkers in the Free State found that fully half of those surveyed who stated that labour relations on the farm were satisfactory still reported that they were verbally abused, and 19 per cent that they were physically abused - the expected standard of treatment is very low. Nearly 40 per cent of farmworkers reported some kind of abusive treatment from farm owners, often as a response to perceived minor infractions such as incorrect operation of machinery (Ulicki and Crush 2000).