The slaughter of white farmers and their families continues as the government of South Africa agitates the masses to continue their crimes. Barbed wire fences cannot protect these families. The perpetrators find a way to penetrate the farms and torture their victims before the final kill. I am finding in my research that those taking part in the killings are not holding onto the memory of Apartheid, as much as they are angry at an incredibly corrupt government – the African National Congress (ANC) and President Zuma.
Of course race and the memory of Apartheid does play a part in these despicable killings, but the world needs to know that those governing in S. Africa are no better than common criminals. It did not begin this way, but you will read the true story of a country, torn apart, and taken over by thugs.
When I first began to research and write about the plight of the farmers in S. Africa, I did not know the history of the ANC and President Zuma. I believe it is important for the world to know the real story of South Africa – post Apartheid.
First – more on the horrific slaughter of white farmers and their families:
From genocidewatch.com
Bury them alive!: White South Africans fear for their future as horrific farm attacks escalate
Robert Lynn and Susan Howarth were tortured at their farm in South Africa
WARNING: GRAPHIC CONTENT
LAST month, British woman Sue Howarth and her husband Robert Lynn were woken at 2am by three men breaking into a window of their remote farm in Dullstroom, a small town in the northeast of South Africa, about 240km from the nearest capital city.
The couple, who had lived in the area for 20 years, were tied up, stabbed, and tortured with a blowtorch for several hours. The masked men stuffed a plastic bag down Mrs Howarth’s throat, and attempted to strangle her husband with a bag around his neck.
The couple were bundled into their own truck, still in their pyjamas, and driven to a roadside where they were shot. Mrs Howarth, 64, a former pharmaceutical company executive, was shot twice in the head. Mr Lynn, 66, was shot in the neck.
Miraculously he survived, and managed to flag down a passer-by early on Sunday morning. Mrs Howarth, who police said was “unrecognisable” from her injuries, had multiple skull fractures, gunshot wounds and “horrific” burns to her breasts.
“Sue was discovered amongst some trees, lying in a ditch,” writes Jana Boshoff, reporter for the local Middelburg Observer newspaper. “Her rescuers managed to find her by following her groans of pain and then noticing drag marks from the road into the field.
“Her head was covered with a towel. Her eyes were swollen shut. She was partially clothed with just scraps of her shirt remaining. Her breasts and upper body was bloody. The plastic bag, shoved down her throat, took some effort to remove because her jaw was clamped down tightly.
“How she managed to breathe with the bag in her throat remains a mystery. One of her rescuers later recalled how Sue was unresponsive except for the constant groaning. Whilst the man ran back to the road to see if an ambulance has not arrived yet, she managed to curl one of her arms around her breasts in a last attempt to protect herself.”
She was rushed to hospital and placed on life support, but died two days later. Due to her British nationality, her murder attracted an unusual amount of overseas media attention.
In any other country, such a crime would be almost unthinkable. But in South Africa, these kinds of farm attacks are happening nearly every day. This year so far, there have been more than 70 attacks and around 25 murders in similar attacks on white farmers.
Earlier this month, for example, 64-year-old Nicci Simpson was tortured with a power drill during an attack involving three men at her home on a farm in the Vaal area, about two hours drive from Johannesburg.
When paramedics arrived, they found three dead dogs, and the woman lying in a pool of blood, spokesman Russel Meiring told News24. “They used a drill to torture her,” police spokesman Lungelo Dlamini said.
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.
The most reliable numbers are released by the Transvaal Agricultural Union, which represents commercial farmers, and civil rights group AfriForum.
According to the TAU, last year there were 345 attacks resulting in 70 deaths — the highest death toll since 2008. In 2015 there were 318 attacks resulting in 64 deaths, and the year before there were 277 attacks resulting in 67 deaths.
In total, between 1998 and the end of 2016, 1848 people have been murdered in farm attacks — 1187 farmers, 490 family members, 147 farm employees, and 24 people who happened to be visiting the farm at the time.
While South Africa has one of the highest rates of violent crime anywhere in the world, the attacks on white farmers are no ordinary crimes.
In a 2014 report, “The Reality of Farm Tortures in South Africa”, AfriForum wrote that “the horror experienced during farm tortures is almost incomprehensible”.
“The well-known ‘blood sisters’ from the South African company Crimescene-cleanup have rightly indicated that, in their experience, farm tortures are by far the most horrific acts of violence in South Africa,” the report said.
“They are of the opinion that the term ‘farm murders’ is misleading and that the terms ‘farm terror’ and ‘farm tortures’ are more suitable.”
An image of an elderly farm attack victim uploaded to Facebook.Source:Facebook
While sometimes farmers and their families are tortured to obtain information, such as the whereabouts of keys to the safe, human rights groups say the excessive brutality may be intended to send a message to the general farming community — get out of our country.
Victims are often restrained, harmed with weapons such as machetes and pitchforks, burned with boiling water or hot irons, dragged behind vehicles and shot. Female victims are often raped during attacks.
AfriForum warns that the attacks are becoming increasingly sophisticated, military-style raids, but says community farm watch groups and sharing of information on WhatsApp and Facebook were thwarting a “significant” number.
The three men responsible for killing Mrs Howarth — Themba William Yika, Nkosinathi Yika and Lucas Makua — were arrested soon after, and more than 150 farmers turned up to demonstrate outside court.
But any form of justice is incredibly rare, and white farmers are increasingly questioning their future. The number of white farmers in South Africa has halved in a little over two decades to just 30,000. Thousands more farms are up for sale.
“The farmers live in fear, because being a farmer in South Africa is the most dangerous occupation in the world,” Henk van de Graaf, spokesman for the TAU, told Swedish newspaper Nya Tider last year.
“The average murder ratio per 100,000 or the population in the world is nine, I believe. In South Africa, it is 54. But for the farming community it is 138, which is the highest for any occupation in the world.”
Since 2007, at the direction of the government, South African police have stopped releasing statistics about the race of the victims. Monitoring group Genocide Watch says the cover-up has been exacerbated by American and European governments, which have “remained silent about the problem, reinforcing the campaign of denial”.
The rise in farm attacks has been blamed on increasingly anti-white hate speech, particularly from the ruling African National Congress.
In 2010, high-profile ANC member Julius Malema sang “Shoot the Farmer, Kill the Boer”, which Genocide Watch describes as “once a revolutionary song, but now an incitement to commit genocide”.
Malema was convicted for hate speech and the singing of the song was banned, but just seven months later president Jacob Zuma sang the song himself at an ANC event, in direct contempt of the judge’s ruling.
Malema was later kicked out the ANC, forming his own Marxist party, the Economic Freedom Fighters, which is now the third-largest party in parliament. Recently, Malema has been travelling the country urging black South Africans to take back land from “Dutch thugs”.
“People of South Africa, where you see a beautiful land, take it, it belongs to you,” Malema was quoted in The Telegraph as telling parliament.
Perhaps in response to populist pressure from Malema, Zuma earlier this month called for the confiscation of white-owned land without compensation. Zuma urged the “black parties” in the parliament to unite to form the two-thirds majority that would be needed to make the necessary change to the country’s constitution.
Last week, during a debate in parliament about the farm attacks, an ANC MP shouted “Bury them alive!” while MP Pieter Groenewald was speaking about the plight of white farmers.
“This is proof that the utterances of political leaders could lead to violence and murders and that the issue of farm murders is of little importance to the ANC,” AfriForum’s head of community safety, Ian Cameron, said in a statement afterwards. “Certain members of the ANC were chatting during the debate and not listening nor partaking at all.”
While right-wing groups have claimed South Africa is experiencing “white genocide”, Genocide Watch disputes that characterisation. According to the group’s founding president, Dr Gregory Stanton, “early warnings of genocide are still deep in South African society, though genocide has not begun”.
South Africa president Jacob Zuma. Picture: Mujahid Safodien/AFPSource:AFP
Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema.Source:AFP“
From Huffingtonpost.com
Maimane: Zuma Killed The ANC, We Won’t Let Him Kill South Africa
The truth is President Zuma and the ANC are one and the same. And that’s why the ANC cannot fix itself.
South Africa’s opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) leader Mmusi Maimane
Like many South Africans, I grew up believing in the ANC as the party of liberation. It was the party of my parents. The party that turned this country around and set our course for a future that was infinitely better than our painful past. Back then, the ANC made life better for millions of South Africans.
“Anyone claiming to speak in the name of Oliver Tambo would know… that his intrinsic sense of political honour made him totally and utterly opposed to attempts by people to use the name of the struggle for material accumulation, personal or family enrichment… or individual ambition.”
But he struck the final blow. He wiped out Oliver Tambo’s legacy to make himself rich. First he killed the ANC and now he is killing our country. Honourable Speaker, Today we vote on the budget of the Presidency. But we cannot stand here and pretend that we’re voting on a budget that will serve the people of this country. We cannot ignore the fact that the President of the Republic has made a crooked deal with a crooked family, and now they own him.
We cannot ignore the fact that the President appoints cabinet ministers and board members of State-Owned Companies according to this family’s instructions because that’s part of their deal. We cannot ignore the fact that our President has opened the doors of our Treasury to this family – to give them mines, contracts, advertising revenue – because that is the crux of their deal.
We cannot stand here and pretend that the Presidency is anything other than the headquarters of the Gupta empire, with President Zuma fronting for them. The budget we’re voting on today is nothing more than a sponsorship deal for a corrupt syndicate. If we vote for it, we support a budget for a Mafia shadow state. Section 85 of the Constitution says that the executive authority of the Republic is vested in the President. So why is ours vested in Dubai?
This is a budget for President Gupta. Keep that in mind when you cast your vote. Honourable Speaker, Our nation is facing crisis after crisis. Nine million people wake up every day knowing that they won’t find work. We have a junk status economy and investors are leaving our shores. Our education system is considered among the very worst in the world. Our children disappear every day. Women are raped and murdered every day.
These are the things our President should be talking about, but he says nothing. They are the things we should all be talking about. But here we are, discussing emails and how President Zuma sold our country. First he killed the ANC and now he is killing our country. And the question is: What did you, the ANC, do about it? Because it was within your power to stop him. If you had the will and the conviction to do the right thing – to do your sworn duty to your country – you would have stopped him.
If you could see beyond the factional loyalties, the perks and the privileges, the Gupta party line, you would have stopped him. But you weren’t prepared to do that, were you? Because if you were, you would have done so a long time ago. You’ve had plenty of opportunities. On six occasions in the past seven years, you could have supported a Motion of No Confidence in President Zuma. But you didn’t.
You could have recalled him when the Constitutional Court found that he had violated the Constitution. But you didn’t. You could have removed him from office when the State Capture Report implicated him in corruption on a grand scale. But you didn’t. You could have removed him on the weekend after thousands of emails linked him to the corrupt Gupta empire. But you didn’t.
Instead, you rallied around him every single time. President Zuma first. South Africa last. Guptas first. South Africa last. ANC first. South Africa last. Honourable Members, you had the courage to remove the Apartheid government. Now you cannot find the courage to remove one man. You have shown South Africa your true colours.
You have shown us that South Africa doesn’t have a President Zuma problem. It doesn’t even have a Gupta problem. It has an ANC problem. The truth is President Zuma and the ANC are one and the same. And that’s why the ANC cannot fix itself. Any new leader at the top will just be a new front for the same corruption and the same looting.
You have left South Africans no choice but to vote the ANC out of government. The ANC’s funeral will be held in 2019, but it is already dead. Fellow South Africans, We dare not languish in hopelessness. When things fall apart, they fall into place. President Zuma may have killed the ANC, but we will not let him kill South Africa.
We have a vision of a South Africa that has reinvented itself and is flourishing under a new government. We have a vision of a South Africa that belongs to all and that works for all who live in it. We have a vision of a South Africa where every young person has opportunities to become whatever they want to be. Freedom. Fairness. Opportunity.
To make this vision a reality will require many allies. It will require the cooperation of every party and every person who shares our dream for an inclusive, forward-looking South Africa. It will also require collaboration with the good men and women who remain in these benches to my right, torn between their love for their country and their loyalty to a party that no longer exists. This is not about the colour of your T-shirt and it is not about the colour of your skin.
All that matters is that you want what’s best for the 56 million people of this country. Anyone who agrees with the values that form the foundation of our plan to rebuild South Africa is welcome on board. These values are constitutionalism, inclusive economic growth, non-racialism, a capable state and zero tolerance for corruption.
If we can agree on these things, then we can work together to rebuild this country the way we want it to be. No corruption, no stealing, no state capture and no Guptas. Honourable Speaker, I know we have allies in the opposition benches. I also know we have allies out there in business, in labour, in civil society and in churches. But I’m counting on our allies here in these ANC benches too.
Because if you want the same things for our country – and if you cannot stand what has been allowed to happen under President Zuma and the Guptas – then we should be on the same side. We should be building a post-ANC South Africa together. In this post-ANC South Africa, we will put the education of our children first by supporting poor schools to become centres of excellence. No child will be left behind.
We will work hard to create a range of education, training and work opportunities for all young people leaving school. In this post-ANC South Africa, we will recognise the important role investors and entrepreneurs play in creating jobs and fighting poverty.
We will modernise our economy and we will invest in industries that make us globally competitive. In this post-ANC South Africa, we will double the Police Force and we will secure our borders, but we will also look at ways to attract skills and talent from across the continent. We will choose our global friends well and then stand by them in their time of need.
Friends such as my Zambian counterpart, Hakainde Hichilema, who was thrown in jail by a corrupt government. He will know he can count on the support of the South African government. In this post-ANC South Africa, we will do all we can to create opportunities for people to stand on their own two feet and escape the dependency on social grants. But, for those who need them, we will double the grant income.
In this post-ANC South Africa, we will elect a president who will use the Presidency budget to serve the people, and not to stay out of jail. Honourable Speaker, This is our plan to bring our country back on track. And parts of this plan are already underway.
Our new coalition governments in Johannesburg, Tshwane and Nelson Mandela Bay are already making inroads into reversing the damage left behind in these cities. In these metros, we have tarred new roads, launched new metro police, narcotics and K9 units, handed over thousands of title deeds, launched new housing projects and slashed perks for politicians.
Coalition governments are never easy, but we are making them work for the people of these cities. And we can make them work in national government too. But it will require a big shift in the way we all think of our roles in building South Africa.
It will require many of you to accept that the ANC you once knew no longer exists.
Jacob Zuma killed that ANC. We will not let him kill South Africa too. – source
I see a similarity here to our 8 years under the reign of Barack Obama. I see that how leadership goes – so goes the country. In both cases, corruption and immorality from the top affected the masses. In both cases, the president encouraged violence against certain groups of people. This is ongoing in S. Africa. The Lord gave America a reprieve when our new President Donald Trump was elected.
Brethren, continue to pray for South Africa, especially for the white farmers who fear for their lives and the lives of their families on a daily basis.
MARANATHA!