One of the more obscene stories of recent months came from the farming region of Weenen in KwaZulu-Natal. The Ismail family, well-known and respected cattle farmers and businesspeople in the area, were attacked by three armed intruders. Zakiyya Ismail, mother of two and pregnant with a third child, was murdered, her throat slit, while her husband, Ayoob, was injured. Their young children were assaulted.
It appears nothing was ultimately stolen.
A local religious leader, Moulana Zakariyya Belcham, poignantly described the scene following the attack, and the sense of shock among the community, including those who had rushed to the farmstead to try and help. The attack was viscerally brutal, and senseless. ‘This was an attack on a family that did not pose a threat to anybody,’ he said.
Violent crime is sadly nothing unusual in South Africa, and the threat of it is a constant in the life of the farming community – irrespective of background, farmers, their families, their employees and their dependants all live under its shadow.
This has long been the case. According to information collated by the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU), which closely monitors and records the phenomenon, since 1990 there have been some 5 055 attacks on farms and smallholdings, and some 2 078 murders. Victims include farmers, workers, farming family members as well as visitors.
In the year to date, TAU has reported 30 murders and 155 attacks. The gruesome murder of Ms Ismail – as well as others, such as singer Wynand Breedt on a farm near Worcester and cannabis activist Julian Stobbs on his smallholding in Lanseria – underlines the seriousness of the issue in the farming community.
As crime analyst Dr Johan Burger has argued, South Africans’ fear of crime owes a great deal to the fact that it intrudes into their homes. There are few safe or secure spaces. Farming households and smallholders, existing in relative isolation, are often beyond reach of timely assistance.
Perhaps for this reason, data on instances of violence against farmers and smallholders fail to capture the full sense of threat. In 2018, AgriSA published a survey of crimes affecting farms; using 2017 data, it estimated that some 70% of farms had experienced some form of crime. Crimes against property – for example, stock theft, vandalism, poaching – are an ever-present reality. These are a reminder of the vulnerability of farming communities. The escalation of such crimes into violence is a constant possibility.
Non-reporting of crimes
Indeed, the report indicates that around a quarter of farmers had experienced robbery, which is often associated with violence. There was also a widespread belief that the security situation was deteriorating, and that a great deal of non-reporting of crime arose from the belief that it was pointless to do so.
Over the months of the lockdown, the shadow of threat and fear has been growing. TAU’s statistics suggest that the lockdown period has not seen a sharp escalation in farm attacks – between 27 March 2020 and 7 July 2020, it recorded 86 attacks, as opposed to 84 in the equivalent preceding period, between 13 December 2019 and 26 March 2020. Murders had increased somewhat, from 14 before the lockdown to 18 during it.
However, farmers and industry representatives to whom the IRR has spoken evince a profound sense of frustration and fear. Much of this appears to be driven by the perception of escalating property crime. Tommie Esterhuyse, AgriSA’s chair of rural safety, reported a large increase over this period in stock and produce theft – along with around one farm attack per day.
One farmer who spoke to the IRR said that there had been a ‘tenfold increase in crime since the lockdown began’. He described being hit three times by stock rustlers, and even having been fired at. Support from the police was limited, apparently because of their reluctance to take on thieves carrying firearms.
Precisely what is pushing the crime wave needs to be interrogated, as hard data become available. Most likely, it is a combination of perceived opportunities by criminal groups created by the shutdown of society, and desperation on the part of people whom the lockdown has deprived of a livelihood.
But there is no doubt that what is happening reflects entrenched problems in the handling of rural and farming security. Observers have repeatedly pointed out that dealing with these crimes is undermined by an inadequate envelope of resources available to the police.
Reservist system
Major General Chris van Zyl, TAU’s deputy general manager, argues that while the current Rural Safety Strategy is not a bad one, finances and personnel are inadequate. Private security services and a reservist system that take account of the rural context are imperative. Says Van Zyl: ‘The allocation of resources (personnel and logistics) augmented by a practical and agriculture-friendly SAPS Reservist system and a dedicated crime intelligence capability is urgently required.’
Dealing with violent crime will require dealing with its non-violent counterpart, too, he adds. These elements bleed into each other.
Unfortunately, for now, farming communities are faced with a set of challenges that imperil both lives and economic viability. The state lacks the capacity and often the will to offer them the protection they deserve. This reflects a deeper malaise in the state, and there is little to suggest that this will change soon.
But in the current climate, where human dignity is routinely invoked on any number of issues, perhaps a place to start is with acknowledging that a serious problem exists. And to refrain from the incitement inherent in the language that permeates much of our public discourse – the vocabulary of ‘land thieves’ and the like.
Both our humanity and the injunctions of pragmatism surely demand nothing less.
This article was offered to a news media platform, but rejected partly on the grounds that it disputed the statistical information. The statistics were received from TAU SA, and faithfully reproduced.
[Picture: Markus Spiske on Unsplash]
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