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Subscribe to RSSERMELO, South Africa -- 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.
Whether attacks have been motivated by race or robbery, a rising death rate from rural homicides is drawing attention to the lack of change on South Africa's farms nearly two decades after the end of apartheid -- and to the tensions burgeoning over enduring racial inequality.
Some of South Africa's predominantly white commercial farmers go as far as to brand the farm killings a genocide.
'Potentially explosive' issue
On the other side of the divide, populists are seizing on the discontent among the black majority to demand a forced redistribution of white-owned farms along the lines of neighboring Zimbabwe.
"The issue is potentially explosive," said Lechesa Tsenoli, deputy minister for land reform, arguing that South Africa's future depends on ending inequality on the farms.
The economic change promised by Nelson Mandela's African National Congress (ANC) when white-minority rule ended in 1994 has been even slower in the countryside than in cities and mines, where at least small elites of black South Africans have prospered.
Land ownership ratios are little changed from 1913, when the Natives' Land Act set aside 87 percent of land for whites. Meanwhile, black farm workers are among South Africa's poorest.
But life is getting more uncomfortable for the white farmers, too. Their number is down a third, to some 40,000, in the past 15 years. Headlines about the farm killings are another incentive to sell.
For while South Africa's overall annual murder rate has more than halved since the end of apartheid to around 32 people per 100,000, figures for commercial farmers show a near 50 percent rise to an average rate of some 290 per 100,000 a year in the five years to 2011.
Shot through the neck and chest
Shot at his home by black attackers two years ago, 34-year-old Johan Scholtz believes he was the victim of a racially motivated attack rather than a robbery.
PhotoBlog: Violent labor strikes expand to South Africa farms
"I was shot through my neck, I was shot through my chest and as I fell to the ground they came and stood over me and they shot again -- two times -- just missed my brain," Scholtz said, fighting back tears as he recalled the incident.
"My sheep were there around the house, they could've taken the sheep. My house was open, they could've easily gone in. But they left with nothing," he said, adding that the family did not own much worth stealing.
Scholtz now keeps a baseball bat by his bed at his livestock farm in Ermelo, in the undulating veld some 140 miles east of Johannesburg. He is asking himself how long he will stay in the business.
NBC's Ron Allen asked three students from the University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg for their impressions of South Africa's past -- and if they feel positive about their own futures.
Despite the ANC's pledge to build a "rainbow nation," South Africa's income disparity -- which had already been among the top few in the world -- has widened further since apartheid ended, according to World Bank figures.
South Africa launches new Nelson Mandela bank notes
Among the very poorest are the black farm workers, suffering not only from the economic hardship, but -- all too often -- a brand of racial abuse unchanged since the end of white rule.
"For farm workers at the bottom like me, we are not allowed to talk to farm owners directly," complained one 28-year-old fruit farm worker from the northeastern Limpopo province, asking that he be called only by his first name, Frans.
Mandela's 'Rainbow Nation' determined to succeed
"The farmers disrespect us to a point they would use the 'K-word,'" he said. The "K-word" is "kaffir," apartheid-era slang for a black person and highly offensive.
While wages for most workers have increased steadily since apartheid, they have risen more slowly for farm workers -- who earn only 10 to 30 percent of a typical factory worker's wage. About half those in rural areas live on less than $3 a day.
Anger has boiled over in violent strikes in recent weeks in the Cape Town wine region, where thousands of farm workers demand a doubling in wages from about $8 a day.
The South African politician blamed for inflaming the miners' strikes there told NBC News that the treatment of the poor is worse now than it was under apartheid. Julius Malema, - expelled from the ruling African National Congress for his radical views - says he wants to spread the chaos, that left 34 miners dead. NBC's Rohit Kachroo reports.
Study: Robbery, not race, the biggest motive
The motive for nearly 90 percent of farm attacks was robbery rather than race, according to the biggest government study on the subject, published nearly a decade ago.
"There might be segments within the South African population that would like to use words such as genocide, but farm attacks are a result of criminal activities," said Andre Botha of Agri SA, the largest farmers' union, which points out that the small number of black commercial farmers are also victims of crime.
Cops shoot dead 7 robbers in South Africa
"It's an obvious result of the lifestyle that we chose. Farms are a soft target," he said.
Disentangling motives is no easy task, however, in a society where whites have the vast majority of the wealth on display and the history of discrimination can add another edge to attacks on isolated homesteads.
On Wednesday, Nelson Mandela celebrated his 94th birthday, another remarkable accomplishment after enduring so much in the name of freedom. Two decades after the end of apartheid in South Africa the divide between the rich and poor is still strikingly visible, but today's young adults have great hopes for the future. NBC's Ron Allen reports.
"Sometimes it degenerates into racial conflict," said Johan Burger of the Institute for Security Studies, who has been studying farm violence for more than a decade.
When white supremacist leader Eugene Terre'blanche was hacked to death by two farm workers in 2010, racial motives were suspected, but it turned out to have been caused by a wage dispute.
Complete Africa coverage on NBCNews.com
The racial discontent on the farms has also become an element in the political equation at a time of tensions over wildcat mineworkers' strikes and factional struggles within the ruling ANC.
'Shoot the Boer' rhetoric
Before being told to stop by the courts, populist leader Julius Malema stirred up crowds with his singing of "Shoot the Boer" --deepening unease among whites in a country where the Afrikaans word for farmer is synonymous with the people who make up most of the 10 percent white minority.
Secretary of State Clinton tells of the important life lessons she has learned through her friendship with Nelson Mandela.
Although the ANC has decided to drop the apartheid-era song after firing Malema as its youth leader, the affair has pushed race further onto the political agenda.
AfriForum, a vocal advocacy group for Afrikaans-speakers -- who descend mostly from Dutch and French settlers -- blames the song in part for the rise in crimes against farmers as it catalogues murders, rapes and other attacks.
"The amount of violence is horrific," said AfriForum's Ernst Roets.
Voice of hate or hero? S. Africa's downtrodden workers put faith in Malema
Meanwhile, Malema and the ANC's youth wing are demanding that white-owned land be turned over to black South Africans.
For radicals, Zimbabwe's experience set a good example to follow -- even though the forced seizures of land helped push South Africa's neighbor into nearly a decade of economic decline.
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View images of civil rights leader Nelson Mandela, who went from anti-apartheid activist to prisoner to South Africa's first black president.
According to a plan drawn up under Mandela, 30 percent of farmland was meant to be handed to black South Africans by 2014. Only 8 percent has been transferred, however, and the government is now reviewing the plan.
Complete World coverage on NBCNews.com
The direct economic impact of any radical change in land ownership might be less dramatic in South Africa than in Zimbabwe because farming accounts for only about 3 percent of gross domestic product rather than 20 percent.
But no matter how it is addressed, the potential for growing confrontation over race and land raises another dangerous prospect for Africa's biggest economy.
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Leave a Comment:
Pretty soon the monkeys will not be able to feed themselves - just like the monkeys from Rhodesia.
Well, you're racist comment is literally unnecessary to make the point.
Looking at Zimbabwe, a failure of a state, should clue anyone in that a person thinking forces seizure of farms is a good idea should just remove all food from their home, not be allowed to buy anymore food, and start from there.
OK Max, I read the entire article and did not find any reference to starving monkeys.
Technically, we are all highly-evolved talking apes sharing a speck of dust flying through the vastness of space, but I wouldn't expect one such as yourself to consider such things.
There are obviously apes and monkeys. Apes are a lot smarter. Rhodesia was one of the richest countries in Africa, exporting food all over the world. Look at them now. Can't even feed themselves, despite taking over all the land and all the means of production. They do deserve to die out to remove themselves from the human genetic pool as their stupidity and vile activities show. South Africa is not there yet because the whites are still there. But once they are gone - it will be the same story. There is only so much stuff to steal and pillage before you wake up hungry one day.
Crudely put and racially insensitive, but sadly essentially accurate.
Ethnic cleansing in Zimbzbwe caused economic collapse and starvation, but it drove out the white men.
Once upon a time, South Africa and Zimbabwe (formerly Rhodesia) produced enough food to feed ALL their many colors of people, AND EXPORT FOOD to other nations! Then along came Obama's Daddy's favorite ideology: CONFISCATION AND REDISTRIBUTION OF WHITE WEALTH AND REAL ASSETS TO LOCAL BLACK POLITICAL GRIFTERS! YAY! Now, both South Africa and Zimbabwe produce neither enough food to feed their own ravenous Black populations (let alone their disenfranchised White and Asian productive populace) nor export food to other nations! (Yes kiddies, thanks to anti-colonialism, these two once-healthy nations are now dependent on U.N. food handouts and World Bank usurious loans!) Ruling Black Tribalist politicians are too lazy and too elitist to get their hands dirty (like White farmers) and personally till the soil of their purloined, unearned farms. Hence, millions of acres of areable, rich, food producing land has gone forever fallow, with famine perpetually close at hand! These idiotic, imbecilic Black Nationalists are too invested in their own race's millenia-old tribal tradition of conquest, slavery and political patronage. The concept of self-imposed agricultural serfdom is so anethema to these ruling Black-idiots, that they refuse to work from dawn to dusk--as WHITE FARMERS HAVE DONE for the last century and a half--because agriculture is LOWLY WOMENS' WORK! Just like their ignorant Black Nationalist, Democrat counterparts in the U.S., these Black-African Socialist cretins have opted to SELL-OUT their nations' natural resources AND peoples' labor to the lowest and most-racist bidder: THE CHINESE. And ALL for short-term and strictly personal gain! For years now, these stupid African Black Nationalists have imagined the yoke of slavery to be intolerable under the White Man's watch...LOL! Wait until they experience what the Yellow Man has in store for them: ABJECT GENOCIDE! The Yellow Man is salivating at the prospect of a de-Blacked African continent. The Chinese conquest and re-colonialization of Africa has already begun! Systematic annihilation of its Black population is merely a matter of time...Veritas vincit!
If I had been attacked like that one farmer, I'd having something a Hell of a lot more deadly than a baseball bat for protection. If I was a white farmer there right now, I'd sell and move to Idaho. Let the Black South Africans figure out how to run the farms, I'm sure they'll do fine.
That is what turned most of S. Africa into an arid desert.
That same scenario was repeated in Zimbabwe years earlier. Seizure of, and redistribution of the productive farms and given to those incapable of and unwilling to work them only resulted in their destruction. What actually happened to the farms that were seized and handed over was that they were stripped of anything of value and the rest was trashed. The natives never had any intention of actually working the farms because that would have meant they would need to actually work.
Just like here in America, these people prefer to be wards of the state receiving handouts in return for their votes, and when the handouts stop, the riots will begin.
This is genocide. It occured in Rhodesia. South Africa is going to hell in a handbasket led by the ANC. The white farmers will lose their land eventually and when that happens South Africa will collapse just like Rhodesia !
Todd- that would be all fine and dandy BUT, the US won't accept an application to immigrate here from any of those farmers. they get the same treatment from the EU as well. they can have all the money/ education they would need to not be a burden to the country they enter but are denied entry.
oh and a baseball bat is all he can really use as the farmers and whites in general were required to give up their guns after apartied ended.
From what I am told by White South Africans, Whites there are not allowed to own firearms, hence, the baseball bat. America's future, being played out in SA.
Like Detroit, any white folk left in S. Africa are at risk.
But remember, according to race hucksters, only whites can be racist.
but Obama would be a really great president there!
Detroit, NY, LA, Chicago, DC, Houston, Dallas, Miami, NOLA, Pheonix, San Diego, Philly and just about every large American city. G-d help this nation when the economy collapses. Those that don't have, will "take" what they want and "deserve" from those that they think do have.
let the bastards try and take. they will wind up dead
I'm pretty sure if the white farmers all left about 20% or more of SA population would die in a year from starvation because of an inability to work the farmland successfully
If the U.S. turned over all commercial farms to Native Americans it probably wouldn't go over too well either.
Scientific race studies have found that blacks tend to be incapable of long-term planning ability, which is probably which affects the behavior of most blacks, whether they are in the US or Africa. Its not their fault; it stems from their evolutionary development living 100% of the time in a hot climate where there was no need for their brains to evolve to plan how to store food in lean times.
But this is how they can steal the farms, and then the farms disintegrate; because they don't have the mental ability to PLAN for how to run the farms after the Whites are gone. This is also why blacks have never been able to successfully create and maintain a civilization.
Met a man from Rhodesia who's family left their farm after an attack by the blacks. Even with all the equipment and animals, the people that took the farm wouldn't/couldn't work the land and he said they saw pictures of their farm as nothing but weeds and brush a few years later.
Kinda like neighborhoods here. No good can come of this.
....it will be a real problem when the new "farmers" try to grow Cheez Doodles.....
After one growing season these farms turn right back into dust, when handed to blacks. This can be seen all over the continent were similar reparations are forced to be paid with land, AND BLOOD!!!
The 1913 law turning over 87% of land to whites was obviously unjust, but violence against modern Caucasians who had nothing to do with that law is equally unjust. Attempts at forced redistribution of land, wealth, etc. will inevitably make the problem worse.
A reasonable solution may be a cooperative apprenticeship-type program so whites can teach black farmers modern commercial farming methods, coupled with a program for those qualified farmers to lease territory from large landowners. Unfortunately, radicals on both sides will probably make such solutions impossible.
if you give all the white run farms to the blacks it will kill off the black race...it's been proven they cannot run a farm that was profitable when the white farmer ran it.they used to export food..now they have to import almost all ther food and want to cry they are starving....
The Genocide of White South Africans is only now news to MSNBC - it has been going on for sometime, frankly I am surprised that it was even printed here. When innocent white men, women, and children are brutally murdered (and generally the women raped) it hardly rates a headline. Why do you think White South Africans are leaving? A white British National was hacked to death last week after foolishly moving to SA. Lesson Learned for others.
took the whites to set it up for them. and now the blacks will screw it up like it always do. if it wasn't for the Europeans settling their they wouldn't have what they have now
This is why I say the White man was insane to go to the Dark Continent in the 1800s and try to civilize it. They should have just ignored it.
Yep everyone knows whats going to happen once the white farmers are gone the monkeys are going to starve. Its interesting you could drop off a bunch of white people just about anywhere and they will build a society and prosper. On the other hand you put a bunch of black people in the same situation and they will go to war, starve and return to the stoneage.
Evolutionary biology explains why the races have evolved as they have. See "Race, Evolution and Behavior" by the late Dr J Philippe Rushton, PH.D
You do have to wonder where all of the Obama Supporters are......Kind of like looking for a functioning farm or business in "Zimbabwe" never to be found!
This is a "hard" issue for the West to face for there are so many resources and people who would suffer and die if the White South Africans just "Pulled out".
Rwanda would look like a friendly family argument in comparison. Perhaps we should have been a "little" more realistic in our "Interference".
Oh well white security jobs in South Africa should be booming anyway!
“One does not establish a dictatorship in order to safeguard a revolution; one makes the revolution in order to establish the dictatorship.” ~George Orwell, 1984
Great discussion. It's so enlightening when the republickkkan base puts on its thinking cap.
Or, another way to put it, here are people exactly like those who caused the problem coming up with an alternative theory of what caused the problem.
Or, to explain to the dolts: if you brutalize people for a couple hundred years you end up with a population holding an unusually high percentage of brutal people.
On the other hand, it took the blacks in Germany only ten or fifteen years to develop an unusually high percentage of brutal people. Er, wait, there's a mistake in that sentence somewhere. . . .
Good comparison- Modern day Germans vs modern day Africans, raping and hacking Whites to death. Nice kkk reference you liberals have some homo-erotic fascination with that rag-tag group numbering about 3,000 in the US total. What you overlook, is the ANC and other radical African groups are out to eliminate Whites, as their mantra states :One settler, one bullet
The ANC is a communist organization. Mandela is a communist. Perhaps all this redistribution is where Obama got the idea from, his communist mentors. Redistribution will have the same effect in the US or anywhere else.
The funny thing about South Africa is that the blacks living there came long after it was settled by the white farmers. When it settled by the whites in the late 1400's there were only a few bushman. It wasn't until the 19th century that the current group of blacks migrated to S. Africa. They were never farmers but animal herders and homicidal savages. Read Washing of Spears.
The Dutch East India company controlled the southern part of SA from 1652 to 1795. That is when most of the Boers and others who make up the ethnic group now known as Afrikaners came to Africa. I doubt there were many whites there before the 1650's, Mike, with the exception of Portuguese slave traders who probably traded there in the 1550's.
Homesick. Don't burst Mike's bubble or kill his buzz....he read a book and now he is an expert. You know, I saw the Chaka Zulu Miniseries a few years back and I do feel qualified to consult on South African Affairs but it's getting late and I am sleepy.......
HOLD ON THERE..... I'm a 5th generation South African and have slowly watched how Africa has been deteriating since the'50s. All seems to start way back with Kenya (Mau Mau uprising) and how they SAVAGELY killed the Whites & Indians but the UK, UN etc allowed this to happen in the name of "Independance" Then take the RHODESIAS (North & South) south now Zimbabwe which is a TOTAL screw up of a once FOOD BASKET of Africa (Now in the hands of a Autocratic Maniac - Robert Mugabe) The Belgium Congo....Screwed up too. Angola .... the Black terrorists slaughtered the white Portuguese and the same with Mozambique!! and finally down south it was South Africa's turn. This once Jewel of a country is run by a bunch of Marxist Ego minded old fools that are so into nepotism its a joke. THE WESTERN WORLD HAS 'SOLD OUT' SOUTH AFRICA TO THE TERRORIST LEADERS 7 YES THE ARE ALL OUT TO GET US WHITES!!! The ANC have made it law with BEE (Black Economic Empowerment) that any business that does not employ a black person first before a white is fined so heavily!! But can we whites leave to Pastures greener......NO!! because the very countries that said we should hand over EVERYTHING to the blacks have now SCREWED us in the back by NOT allowing us into their countries........ Thanks for signing our death warrents 'Buddies'!!!!
You seem to be leaving out a crucial part of your history. How did the whites get that land in the first place?
Thank God we're heavily armed here so when all the Obama giveme's run out of "giveme's" and decide that it's now time to "takeme" from the evil white racists giveme can get shot.
After years of hated colonialism many African countries have ousted the white overlords. They are now descending back into tribal warfare and starvation. Diamonds and gold will keep S. Africa going for awhile...
Keep on doing it SOB Netanyahu!!. You are taking us all to a 3rd World War.
Talk about biting the hand that feeds you.
Right or wrong, the decay and decline of every country in Africa began when the countries were turned over to native rule. It is not an argument, it is a fact. Greed, coruption and stupidity abound once the africans took over. I was in Rodeshia before it became Zimbabwe. That was a very productive country. Once the blacks took over, the country went to ruin. South Africa is experiencing the greatest loss of young professioinals in its history. The white South Africans are not willing to stay and build. They are targets for robbery, rape and murder if they stay. A mass migration of doctors and professional to Europe, South and North America is leaving a country open for corrupt officals and war lords.
The same goes on in America and Europe. As to whites leave the major cities, they become crime centers. Detriot, Atlanta, LA, Chicago, London, Paris, you name the major city and you'll find high crime areas that were once great places to live. Black on Black crime is astronomical. Black on white crime is next. It is so common that it is hardly raised as an issue by the media. A black can car-jack a white, kill them, rape the women,etc and small mention is made of it on the news. If a white kills a black, Obama goes on national TV and decries that young black man could have been my son. Jessie Jackson, Al Sharpton, the Black Panthers will all gather and demand the death of the white man. Where does it stop? I have no idea. When the whites defend themselves they are branded racists and gun nuts. When a black kills a white, they are poor misguided and misunderstood youths who need more welfare and free college so they can become better criminals and smarter about they way they commit crimes.
I guess once Obama and the rest of the ultra-lberals/socialists/communists suceed in taking away Americans ability to defend themselves by revoking the 2nd amendment, whites will be hunted into extinction as the government and criminals will have all the weapons.
I was stationed in TCHAD during the 70's and it wasn't any better then than it is now. African politics are based on corruption and greed. Tribal mentality is the norm. Africa colonization was Europe's way of exploiting the continent for their natural resources. Just like the Congo is being exploited for minerals today. Let's leave Africa to the Africans. The problem is gold, silver, oil and other natural resources are there and the native Africans don't have the technology to acquire them.
May I suggest that anyone in Africa without the training , ability, weaponry and mental mindset required to defend themselves is at risk. Frogman you are correct. Turning over the country to native rule will result in the reestablishment of a precolonization society. Wether that represents decay and decline would depend upon one's perspective.
The white South African doctors, professionals, other well educated won't be welcome to immigrate to America ,but, Canada, Germany, Israel will take them, America only wants the worst of the worst & those that get off the plane with their hands out for taxpayer freebies.
PTI,
From all the comments on this board it seems that a lot of you really believe that we (white people) are the be all end all of everything. It seems to me that other cultures were doing just fine prior to our interference. We are only in this position because we have the bigger bullet. We need to stop thinking we are gods. What we really are is the minority on this planet. You know the old saying, 'what goes around ,comes around'.
A lot of cultures practiced infant sacrafices. and tribe fought tribe ... Human nature . Nothing new under the sun for thousands of years ... So I— Wonder— Why and how people like you ever make it out of bed.
PTI
WTF... And your point is??? As if we did not do the some of the same things. Perhaps you need to re-visit history again. Afterwards you go to bed and stay there.
I agree that Whites should never have interfered with non-White countries and cultures...even though in the 1800s much of that "interference" brought them schools and medical clinics.
We should have ignored them entirely and let them drown in their own mud.
I— Wonder_Why Regretfully you are a victim of the liberal media brainwashing. Go visit Harlem, Detroit or E. LA, Mombassa , Addis Abbi or Cape Town on a Saturday night around 315 am. Let us know how things turn out for you.
PTI,
WCF1957, Your reply just proves my point. With an attitude like yours... you first.
Gee, how did this story make it to NBC? This must be an error, too bad the UN cannot protect the whites.. too bad the other media outlets will not report it, just another example of what happens when racists take over a government.
Of course, since the blacks have become 'equal' they still want everything the whites have, regardless of whether they have any idea how to use it. Dig back far enough and you will find that the whites really were there first.