Genocide Watch

News alerts, personal stories, and articles on South Africa can be sent to southafrica@genocidewatch.org.

South Africa: Where Corruption, Rape and Murder Are Normal

The unthinkable is now reality. Only in Africa? 

Robert Morley, The Trumpet

October 2013

 

I met a woman from South Africa the other day. What she said shocked me.

 “Not long ago, I thought I was going to get raped and murdered by the police.”

 What?

 She was on her way home to her acreage in a farming community outside Johannesburg when she approached a four-way stop.

 “This intersection is known for carjackings,” she said. “No one stops. You just slow down enough to make sure you are not going to hit anyone, and keep going.

 “You know what happens to people who get carjacked?” she asked. (read more)

 

Those who have taken our land must not be arrogant: Malema

Sapa

26 September, 2013

"We know once we take this land forcefully, they will use the economy to fight us," he said in Pretoria.

Malema was speaking outside the Theo van Wijk building at the University of SA (Unisa) after management denied him and his supporters access to the hall.

He told the large crowd which had gathered to listen to him that Africa was rich, while its occupants were poor.  He said the Europeans on the continent were richer than the natives.  "That has to change. If you take the land, you take everything that comes with it. You take the seed. It won't be the Indian Ocean in Africa, it will be the African ocean," he said.

He told followers to tell those who said they were punishing the wrong people; that a wound did not rot in Sesotho.

He sought to assure white people that genocide would not be committed to get the land back, and said they were brothers who had a right to live in the country. (read more)

National assembly approves controversial information bill
REPORTERS WITHOUT BORDERS: PRESS RELEASE
26 April 2013

Reporters Without Borders is very disappointed by the South African national assembly‟s adoption of the new version of the Protection of State Information Bill (POSIB) yesterday with 190 votes for, 73 against and one abstention.
An earlier version was already adopted at the end of 2011 (http://en.rsf.org/south-africa-will-secrecy-law-approved-by-22-11-2011,41436.html) but, in response to demands for changes from the opposition, the National Council of Provinces (the South African parliament‟s upper house) made a number of minor amendments. These concessions still fall far short of what is needed.
Reporters Without Borders urges President Jacob Zuma not to sign the bill into law as it poses a serious threat to transparency, freedom of expression and accountability. (read more)

Anti-Apartheid Leader Forms New Party in South Africa
By Lydia Polgreen, The New York Times
18 February 2013

JOHANNESBURG — Mamphela Ramphele, a respected veteran of the struggle against apartheid, announced on Monday that she had formed a new political party to compete against the governing African National Congress, calling on South Africans to “join me on a journey to build the country of our dreams.”

The party is called Agang, a Sotho word meaning “build.” In recent years, Dr. Ramphele, 65, a medical doctor who became an anti-apartheid activist and a leader of the Black Consciousness Movement, has focused on social activism and business. Until last week, she served as the chairwoman of Gold Fields, a major mining company.

The new party is the latest in a string of challengers to the dominance of the A.N.C. (read more)

Briton Chris Preece latest victim of South Africa's farm murders

The First Post
27 November 2012

Londoner hacked to death and wife left seriously injured in latest attack on white farm owners The murder of a British man, Christopher Preece, on a South African farm at the weekend has reignited a debate about the alleged "genocide” of the country's white farmers. Fifty-four-year-old Preece, a geologist from Southgate, North London, was hacked to death with knives and machetes on his Fleur de Lis farm in Ficksburg Free State, near Bloemfontain, on Saturday night, but the news only emerged yesterday. He had gone outside to look for his dogs, which are said to have been poisoned by his attackers. Waylaid by three armed men, he fled for his home but was followed inside and killed. (read more)

De Klerk lambastes ANC ‘s Marxist-Leninist policies

Fin 24
Nov 01 2012

Johannesburg - South Africa's last apartheid president F W de Klerk has blamed the ANC for the country's spiralling social and economic woes. In a speech to business leaders late on Wednesday, the 76-year-old De Klerk lambasted the
wealth redistribution policies of the ANC. He said they would cause "social engineering in which people's prospects would once again be determined by race, rather than by individual merit and circumstances". De Klerk hit out at what he called the Marxism-Leninism of some members of the ANC alliance, which he blamed for widespread unemployment and the failure to attract investment. South Africa is experiencing one of its worst crises since apartheid, as a wave of violent strikes led by miners demanding huge wage increases has highlighted the country's huge social discrepancies. De Klerk, co-winner of the 1993 Nobel Peace Prize with Nelson Mandela, acknowledged that some of the country's woes were inherited from the apartheid but argued that the party of President Jacob Zuma was failing to deal with them. (read more)

South Africa – Official Hate Speech

Stage 5:  Polarization

By Genocide Watch -

12 July 2012

The African National Congress has been South Africa’s governing party since the Presidency of Nelson Mandela 17 years ago, following the end of white minority rule and apartheid.  In the years under apartheid, hate speech was used by both supporters and opponents of the apartheid system to stir up their followers.  When racial tensions in South Africa ran high, the song “Kill the Farmer, Shoot the Boer” was a revolutionary song of the anti-apartheid movement.  However, it is an illustration of the long-term impact that such de-humanizing language can have.

After many years when such songs were no longer sung, in 2010, prominent members of the ANC Youth League, in particular Julius Malema, President of the ANC Youth League, openly sang the “Shoot the Boer” song at ANC Youth League rallies.  Not only did revival of the song strike fear into the hearts of Boer farmers, but it has actually been sung during attacks on white farmers. It is an incitement to murder white Afrikaner farmers.

Over 3000 white farmers have been murdered since 1994. The South African police have not made investigation and prosecution of these farm murders a priority, dismissing them as crimes by common criminals.  The government has disbanded the commando units of white farmers that once protected their farms, and has passed laws to confiscate the farmers’ weapons.  Disarmament of a targeted group is one of the surest early warning signs of future genocidal killings. 

A recent outbreak of violent farm invasions has led to casualties among white South Africans. The farm invasions are direct results of calls by Julius Malema and his Deputy, Ronald Lamola for whites to give up their land without compensation, or face violence by angry black youths “flooding their farms.”

In response to Julius Malema, the Freedom Front (FF) cited Section 16.2c of the South African Constitution, which restricts freedom of speech rights by excluding as unprotected speech "advocacy of hatred based on race, ethnicity, gender or religion and incitement to cause harm.” The FF contended that Malema’s singing of the “Shoot the Boer” song was hate speech and therefore a human rights violation. Acting Judge of the South Gauteng High Court, Leon Halgryn declared that the song is hate speech, and it is unconstitutional to either utter or sing “dubul’ibhunu” (“shoot the Boer.”) He issued an injunction against Malema, ordering him to no longer sing the song. The phrase is now considered hate speech.

Julius Malema was shortly thereafter removed as President of the ANC Youth League, and ejected from the ANC.  However, Malema’s followers have defied the judgment and continue to sing the song. Even

President Jacob Zuma sang “Shoot the Boer” at the ANC Centenary Celebration event in January of 2012.  He claimed that its use at the ANC Centenary was not intended as hate speech, but rather to commemorate the struggle against apartheid.

Despite President Zuma’s proclaimed intent, his singing of the song may be contributing to an increasingly hostile environment that threatens the safety of white South Africans.  The number of murders of Boer farmers has increased each month in 2012.

For ten years, Genocide Watch has been the only international human rights group willing to declare an Alert about the high murder rate of Boer farmers, perhaps because it is not “politically correct” to defend the rights of people who once supported apartheid. Genocide Watch is opposed to all forms of racism, from whatever the source. The President of Genocide Watch actively supported the anti-apartheid movement in constitutional consultations with the United Democratic Front when he was a Fulbright Professor of Law in Swaziland.  He has visited South Africa several times since and will soon visit again.

According to the Genocide Watch 8 stages of Genocide, South Africa remains at stage 5:  Polarization.

Why are Afrikaner farmers being murdered in South Africa?

by Leon Parkin & Gregory H. Stanton, President – Genocide Watch
14 August 2012

The following report is the result of an intensive personal inquiry in South Africa conducted July 23 -27, 2012. 

Deliberate inaction of the South African Government has weakened rural security structures, facilitating Afrikaner farm murders, in order to terrorize white farmers into vacating their farms, advancing the ANC/S. A. Communist Party’s New Democratic Revolution (NDR.)

The South African Government for the last 18 years has adopted a policy of deliberate government abolition and disarmament of rural Commandos run by farmers themselves for their own self-defense.  The policy has resulted in a four-fold increase in the murder rate of Afrikaner commercial farmers.  This policy is aimed at forced displacement through terror.  It advances the goals of the South African Communist Party’s New Democratic Revolution (NPR), which aims at nationalization of all private farmland, mines, and industry in South Africa.  Disarmament, coupled with Government removal of security structures to protect the White victim group, follows public dehumanization of the victims, and facilitates their forced displacement and gradual genocide.  

Afrikaner farm owners are being murdered at a rate four times the murder rate of other South Africans, including Black farm owners. Their families are also subjected to extremely high crime rates, including murder, rape, mutilation and torture of the victims. South African police fail to investigate or solve many of these murders, which are carried out by organized gangs, often armed with weapons that police have previously confiscated.  The racial character of the killing is covered up by a SA government order prohibiting police from reporting murders by race.  Instead the crisis is denied and the murders are dismissed as ordinary crime, ignoring the frequent mutilation of the victims’ bodies, a sure sign that these are hate crimes.

However, independent researchers have compiled accurate statistics demonstrating convincingly that murders among White farm owners occur at a rate of 97 per 100,000 per year, compared to 31 per 100,000 per year in the entire South African population, making the murder rate of White SA farmers one of the highest murder rates in the world.

Incitement to genocide is a crime under the International Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, to which South Africa is a state-party.

The ANC government has promoted hate speech that constitutes “incitement to genocide.”  The President of the ANC Youth League, Julius Malema, revived the "Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer" hate song at ANC rallies, until it was declared to be hate speech by a South African judge, and Malema was enjoined from singing it.  For other reasons, Malema was later removed as ANCYL President.  His followers continue to sing the hate song, and the Deputy President of the ANCYL has called for “war,” against “white settlers.”

After the judge’s injunction to halt singing of the hate song, even the President of South Africa, ANC leader Jacob Zuma, himself, began to sing the “Shoot the Boer” song.  Since Zuma began to sing the hate song on 12 January 2012, murders of White farmers increased every month through April 2012, the last month for which there are confirmed figures.

There is thus strong circumstantial evidence of government support for the campaign of forced displacement and atrocities against White farmers and their families.  There is direct evidence of SA government incitement to genocide.

Forced displacement from their farms has inflicted on the Afrikaner ethnic group conditions of life calculated to bring about its complete or partial physical destruction, an act of genocide also prohibited by the Genocide Convention.

High-ranking ANC government officials who continuously refer to Whites as “settlers” and “colonialists of a special type” are using racial epithets in a campaign of state-sponsored dehumanization of the White population as a whole.  They sanction gang-organized hate crimes against Whites, with the goal of terrorizing Whites through fear of genocidal annihilation.

What is dehumanization?

The process of dehumanization has the effect of numbing and decommissioning the moral sentiments of the perpetrator group.  Polarization creates the “us vs. them” mentality, in SA the “Indigenous Black People” group versus the “White Settler Colonialist” group.

ANC leaders publicly incite followers using racial epithets.  By dehumanizing the White victim group, members of the perpetrator group exclude the victim group from their circle of moral obligation not to kill its members.  Dehumanization is the systematic, organized strategy of leaders to remove the inherent natural human restraints of people not to murder, rape, or torture other human beings.  Taking the life of a dehumanized person becomes of no greater consequence than crushing an insect, slaughtering an animal, or killing a pest.  

The ANC denies its genocidal intentions.  But the South African Communist Party is more open about its plan to drive Whites out of South Africa. Gugile Nkwinti, South Africa’s Minister of Rural Development and Land Reform has declared that all “colonial struggles are about two things: ‘repossession of the land and the centrality of the indigenous population.’” Mister Nkwinti is confirming the goals of the South African Communist Party’s New Democratic Revolution (NDR) and stating that the colonial struggle is not yet over in post-1994 South Africa.  He is saying that Whites are unwelcome “settler colonialists” with no role to play in South Africa’s future. 

The Transvaal Agricultural Union, Freedom Front, Democratic Alliance, IFP, Afriforum and numerous other organizations have on a regular basis called for the South African Government to declare farm murders and rural policing a South African government priority.   The President, who should be the guardian of the constitutional rights of all the people, has deliberately ignored these calls for action.

Former President F. W. De Klerk, on 25 July 2012 during the De Klerk Foundation's Crossroads conference correctly accused the current generation of ANC leaders of cynically manipulating racial sensitivities for political ends.  In our analysis, the current ANC leadership also publicly uses incitement to genocide with the long-term goal of forcibly driving out or annihilating the White population from South Africa.  

This report has explained the rationale for the deliberate inaction of South African government functionaries to prevent, prosecute, or stop the murders of Afrikaner farmers.  As a group, Afrikaner farmers stand in the way of the South African Communist Party’s goal to implement their Marxist/Leninist/Stalinist New Democratic Revolution and specifically the confiscation of all rural land belonging to White Afrikaner farmers.

Genocide Watch is moving South Africa back to Stage 6, the Preparation stage in the genocidal process.

Copyright 2012 Leon Parkin & Dr. Gregory H. Stanton

South African Farm Invasions Are Threatened by the ANC Youth League

Genocide Watch Report:
4 July 2012

In 1961 South Africa gained its independence from the British and planning began to redistribute land owned by whites.  But Apartheid was the policy of the white run South African government, which wanted to maintain racial separation in ethnic “homelands.” The initial goal was to redistribute at least 30% of the farming land to black South Africans, but distribution of land was to be by ethnic group. South Africa’s white minority population currently owns approximately 87% of the arable farmland, with the black majority owning only 13%.

Following the end of Apartheid, in 1994 the South African government enacted a land reform program in hopes of addressing the longstanding issue of land distribution.  Under black majority rule, the South African government’s first attempt at land distribution was through the “willing seller-willing buyer” program, which was a “buy back” program. Through this program the government would purchase land from willing white sellers and redistribute it to members of the black community. It was estimated that the program would cost the government upwards of ten billion dollars to execute, a budget it does not have the funds to meet.

The program was ultimately a failure. To date only 6% of the land has been successfully redistributed.  President Jacob Zuma has openly admitted that the “willing seller – willing buyer” model will not work. His administration has since proposed a new plan in “The Green Paper,” which critics have criticized as vague, and avoiding many existing problems.

Unrest is brewing among black South Africans as the land distribution problem remains unresolved.  Warnings of “inevitable” farm invasions by the African National Congress Youth League have caused great fear among white farmers, many of whom are Boers, descendents of the original Dutch settlers, who consider themselves Africans because they have lived in South Africa for hundreds of years.

Following Zimbabwe’s hostile land invasions, leaders of the ANC Youth League have promised to follow Robert Mugabe’s example, and forcibly expropriate farms owned by whites. Julius Malema, at the time President of the ANC Youth League, has demanded that expropriation should be without compensation. He urged his followers to “take back the land that was illegally stolen by the white man from the black man.” Malema is a racist Marxist-Leninist, and espouses an ideology contrary to the ANC’s “willing seller-willing buyer” program, which would provide farmers with financial compensation for their land.  Malema has since been removed as ANC Youth League President and expelled from the ANC.

At a Youth League Policy workshop, Ronald Lamola, declared, "If they don't want to see angry black youths flooding their farms they must come to the party....Whites must volunteer some of the land and mines they own."  Lamola explained, “But white South Africans must continue to participate, they remain relevant to this process and will continue to do so." His comments were followed by warnings of a “Zim-style takeover.” The ANC Youth League demands that the South African Constitution be amended to permit state approved uncompensated land expropriations.

Gwede Mantashe, the general secretary of the ANC, has openly rebuked the ANC Youth League saying "This is not the policy of the ANC…. It is not the ANC policy to expropriate land without compensation and personally I don't think it will work."

Genocide Watch considers land redistribution to be a ticking time bomb in South Africa.  If the wealthy countries of the world do not assist South Africa in resolving it by financing compensation of land-sellers, the “rainbow nation” could descend into violence and go the way of Zimbabwe.

Genocide Watch rates South Africa at Stage Five: Polarization, just at the edge of Stage Six, Preparation.