Police minister Senzo Mchunu has said that rural violence has always been “distorted” and that “(t)ruth is farm murders have always included African people in more numbers”.
TimesLIVE reports that Mchunu said six attacks on rural communities were recorded in the first quarter of 2025, with two fatalities, and in all but one case the victims were black.
He is reported as saying that while police did not categorise people by race on principle, he was doing so in the context of claims about a “genocide of white people”.
Mchunu said that in the previous quarter, from October to December 2024, 12 murders on farms were recorded. One of the 12 − a farm owner − was white.
He also said that while “land invasions” were a criminal problem, they did not represent government policy.
“We want to reject the notion of ‘land grabbing’ in the country, but instead confirm we do have cases of land invasions and the two are very different. Land invasions are not government policy but are, by and large, acts of desperation for land by African people who find themselves landless and need to settle. It is sporadic and it remains unlawful, hence the cases and investigations thereof. This is what has warranted expropriation, to address the problem in a lawful, systematic way.”