From rural protection to rural safety: How government changed its priorities

INTRODUCTION

Attacks on farms and the brutal killing of farmers their workers and other persons remains a sensitive and controversial subject in South Africa. These attacks are also often associated with crimes such as rape, serious assault and torture. Yet Government appears to believe that this problem is being overstated and that the criminal victimisation risk of farmers is no greater than that of the average South African.[1] This is despite the disruption of the commercial farms and smallholdings targeted in such attacks which has serious implications for the country's food security, and for the rural economy in general.

This is almost a complete turn-around from the position the government held just over a decade ago when in 2001 it appointed a Committee of Inquiry into farm attacks.[2] Three years before, in October 1998, the situation was serious enough for then President Nelson Mandela to convene a Rural Safety Summit ‘to deal with rural safety in general and farm attacks in particular'.[3]

In the following year the NOCOC (National Operational Co-ordinating Committee) established a Priority Committee on Rural Safety.[4] The responsibilities of the Priority Committee included the management of the Rural Protection Plan (RPP), attending to reports or complaints by any group, investigating serious allegations, consulting with all role-players on a regular basis, and compiling regular reports to the NOCOC and (from 2000) to its successor the JOINTS[5].[6]

The purpose of this paper therefore is to take another look at the phenomenon of farm attacks and farm murders and to determine what happened to the government's priorities in this regard and what needs to be done to address this challenge.

DEFINING THE CONCEPTS

One of the most difficult aspects of the idea of farm attacks is to define it. A ‘farm attack' or ‘an attack on a farm' is not officially defined as a specific crime category, but can be considered as a planned and violent action by one or more perpetrators against persons on a farm or smallholding with the primary intention to commit a robbery. Very often however these attacks are accompanied by extreme acts of violence resulting in crimes such as murder, attempted murder, rape, assault and torture.

This type of criminal activity is in many ways similar to, and generally recorded as, what the police refer to as ‘robbery at residential premises' (or ‘house robbery') which is regarded as a sub-category of ‘aggravated robbery'. According to the police's official definitions house robbery is defined as:

... the unlawful and intentional forceful removal and appropriation of property from the residential premises of another person.[7]

This definition should have been sufficient to describe a robbery at the residence of a farm or smallholding, but it would obviously not be descriptive of all the other acts of violence and crime that are committed in the process. The same argument would of course be applicable to house robberies. The commission of this crime type is often accompanied by various other crimes and acts of extreme violence inclusive of torture. As with ‘farm attacks' it would therefore perhaps be more descriptive to refer to ‘house robberies' as ‘house attacks' or ‘house invasions' as is the case in the United States of America. In this regard, Professor Rudolph Zinn, in his book on ‘home invasions', describes ‘house robberies' as:

... deliberately planned to take place when residents are home. This form of intrusion is in many ways more traumatic than any other type of crime. It shatters the sense of privacy, control and security that people should feel in their own homes.[8]

In the case of ‘house robberies' in the rural areas and specifically in relation to farms and smallholdings it is obvious that farmers, their families and their workers are considered soft targets by criminals. Farm houses are geographically more isolated than houses in urban areas and therefore further removed from the possible deterrent presence of close neighbours, the police and other security institutions and an immediate response by them.

There is also a popular perception that all farmers are rich or at least relatively wealthy, and therefore lucrative targets. In 1997, as a result of a steady increase in farm attacks and related crimes since the early 1990's and at the instigation of the South African Agricultural Union (SAAU, and predecessor of AgriSA), a working group of the National Operational Co-coordinating Committee (NOCOC), forerunner of the JOINTS, was tasked with the development of a Rural Protection Plan (RPP). Included in the RPP was a definition of what constitutes a farm attack:

Attacks on farms and smallholdings refer to acts aimed at the person of residents, workers and visitors to farms and smallholdings, whether with the intent to murder, rape, rob or inflict bodily harm. In addition, all actions aimed at disrupting farming activities as a commercial concern, whether for motives related to ideology, labour disputes, land issues, revenge, grievances, racist concerns or intimidation, should be included.

[Cases related to domestic violence, drunkenness, or resulting from commonplace social interaction between people - often where victims and offenders are known to one another - are excluded from this definition. Specific crimes that are included in the definition are murder, attempted murder, rape, assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm, robbery, vehicle hijacking, malicious damage to property where the damage exceeds R10 000, and arson.][9]

The current definition, in the National Rural Safety Strategy (NRSS) of 2011, is only slightly different and refers to ‘acts of violence' rather than ‘farm attacks':

Acts of violence against persons on farms and smallholdings refer to acts aimed at persons residing on, working on or visiting farms and smallholdings, whether with the intent to murder, rape, rob or to inflict bodily harm. In addition, all acts of violence against the infrastructure and property in the rural community aimed at disrupting legal farming activities as a commercial concern, whether the motives are related to ideology, land disputes, land issues, revenge, grievances, racist concerns or intimidation are included.

[Cases related to domestic violence or liquor abuse, or resulting from commonplace social interaction between people are excluded from the definition].[10]

EXTENT OF THE PROBLEM

There are currently three open sources of data that include statistics on farm attacks and farm murders:

1. the Report of the Committee of Inquiry on farm attacks (2003);

2. the SAPS Annual Reports (2001/02 - 2006/07); and

3. the Transvaal Agricultural Union of South Africa (currently).

According to the Report by the Committee of Inquiry, who relied almost exclusively on the data provided by the NOCOC and agricultural unions, there were 327 farm attacks and 66 farm murders reported in 1991. By 2001 this had escalated to 1 011 attacks (an increase of 209%) and 147 murders (an increase of 122%). In total there were 6 122 farm attacks and 1 254 murders in the eleven years between 1991 and 2001.[11]

According to the SAPS Annual Report for 2006/07 there were 1 069 attacks and 140 murders in 2001/02, decreasing to 636 attacks and 88 murders in 2005/06.[12] In 2006/07 the attacks unexpectedly increased by almost 25% to 794 while murders dropped slightly from 88 to 86.[13]  The graph in Figure 1 illustrate the trends in attacks and murders between 2001/02 and 2006/07.

Figure 1: Farm attacks and farm murders

The incidence of these attacks and murders were also uneven across the provinces and in 2006/07 certain provinces were particularly affected. The provincial increases in farm attacks were as follows:

• North West: 68 to 132 cases (94,1%);
• Free State: 30 to 49 cases (63,3%);
• Gauteng: 215 to 338 cases (57,2%);
• KwaZulu-Natal: 59 to 82 cases (39%).

During the same period murders increased by 12 in Mpumalanga, by 10 in the Free State, by 7 in KwaZulu-Natal, and by 2 in North West.[14]

The  SAPS Annual Report reveal that in the six year period ending in 2006/07, there were a total of 4 869 farm attacks resulting in  587 murders. When these are added to the numbers contained in the report by the Committee of Inquiry, there were 10 991 attacks resulting in 1 841 murders in the 14 years between 1991/92 and 2006/07. Suddenly, and without explanation the SAPS discontinued the reporting of farm attacks and murders after the 2006/07 Annual Report. As a result, the Transvaal Agricultural Union of South Africa (TAUSA) became the only remaining open source of data in this regard.

TAUSA, however, does not have the capacity or capability to monitor the situation as extensively as the SAPS. This is because TAUSA is not necessarily informed of attacks on smallholdings, where up to 40% of attacks classified as ‘farm attacks' occur. So, for example, in 2007 TAUSA recorded 94 attacks and 60 murders, while the SAPS recorded 794 attacks and 86 murders across the country.[15]

However commendable its efforts in attempting to monitor this phenomenon, the inability of TAUSA to capture the full extent of attacks on farms and smallholdings means that the situation could probably be worse than its figures suggest. According to TAUSA's figures for the period 2008 to September 2012, there were 634 farm attacks resulting in 306 murders. This amounts to an average of one murder during every second attack. This figure compares badly to aggravated robbery in general where there is on average one murder in approximately every forty cases of aggravated robbery.[16]

According to TAUSA, most of the murder victims are the farmers themselves, followed by their spouses and other direct family, their workers and, in a few cases, visitors to farms. For example, of the 37 murders for the first nine months of 2012,

• 25 were farmers,
• 8 were spouses or other direct family,
• 3 were workers and
• 1 was a visitor.

Three of the murdered farmers were black, which highlights the fact that black farmers and black persons in general on farms, often are victims of these attacks. The Committee of Inquiry into farm attacks found, for example, that of the 1 398 victims of farm attacks during the period of their inquiry:

• 61,6% were white,
• 33,3% were black,
• 4,4% were Asian and
• 0,7% were coloured.[17]

Of the 12,3% rape victims, 71% were black. According to the TAUSA records 71 of the 1 022 farmers murdered since 1990 were black, 32 of the 407 direct family that were murdered, were black and 105 out of 115 workers murdered were black.[18]

The seriousness of farm attacks and murders becomes particularly apparent when one compares the murder rate of farmers to that of all South Africans. According to Statistics South Africa's Census of Commercial Agriculture, there were 32 375 commercial farmers (i.e. people running farming operations either full-time or part-time) in South Africa in 2007,[19] but this number is dropping. According to Dr Pieter Mulder, the deputy minister for agriculture, the number of commercial farmers has declined by almost 50% since 1996.[20]

In October 2011 ABSA's head of agribusiness, Ernst Janovsky, predicted that commercial farmer numbers will decline to 15 000 individuals over the next fifteen years, causing significant job losses in rural areas.[21] These concerns are shared by the CEO of the Agricultural Research Council (ARC), Shadrack Moephuli, who warned that the agricultural sector is in a ‘state of crisis' and for the ‘need to find incentives for people to become interested in being farmers and growing food for the rest of us.'[22]

How serious the problem is becomes even more apparent when the number of murders are expressed in ratios which is the acceptable way of undertaking a meaningful comparison. Using the latest available census figures from 2007 for the number of farmers in South Africa (32 375), the murder of 32 farmers (exclusive of their families and workers) in 2011 provides a murder ratio of 98,8 killings per 100 000. This is over three times higher than South Africa's national average of 30,9 murders per 100 000 in that year and 14 times the global average of 6,9 murders per 100 000.[23] South African farmers are also almost twice as likely to be murdered as police officials where 81 murders were recorded during 2011/12, i.e. a ratio of 51 murders per 100 000.[24]

It is against this background that we must consider what Government is doing about the safety of our farming community which has important consequences for the country's food security and rural economy.

THE RURAL PROTECTION PLAN (RPP)

The Rural Protection Plan (RPP) that was implemented in October 1997 was the government's reaction to calls by the South African Agricultural Union (SAAU), that ‘something needs to be done to address the increases in violent crime on farms and smallholdings.'[25] The plan was developed by a working group, or task team, comprising members of the South African Police Service (SAPS), the South African National Defence Force (SANDF) and organised agriculture. This group visited all the provinces and consulted with large and diverse groups of people. The main objective of the RPP was to integrate and coordinate the activities of all the role-players and to ensure effective cooperation in joint planning, action and the combating of crime in rural areas.[26]

The task team formed the basis of what eventually developed into a Priority Committee on Rural Safety in 1999. When the NOCOC was replaced by the JOINTS in 2000, the Priority Committee formed part of the new coordinating structure. The Priority Committee was representative of a number of government departments such as the SAPS, SANDF, Justice, Land Affairs and Agriculture, although the latter two departments seemed to have lost interest over time. The Priority Committee also included organised agricultural organisations such as AgriSA, the Transvaal Agricultural Union of South Africa (TAUSA), the African Farmers Union (AFU) and ‘Action Stop Farm Attacks'. The Priority Committee reports directly to the JOINTS, which, in turn, reports to the Justice, Crime Prevention and Security Cluster (JCPS) at director-general and cabinet minister levels.[27]

The RPP itself was structured primarily around the commando system. It was based on two concepts: area bound reaction forces and ‘home-and-hearth' protection forces.[28] The area bound reaction forces were staffed by local commando members who were called up regularly or in times of crises for paid duty. They were issued with the necessary uniforms and other equipment to perform their commando responsibilities. They were also trained jointly with the police and police reservists to conduct patrols, roadblocks, follow-up operations, cordon-and-search operations and farm visits.

The home-and-hearth protection forces comprised two sub-groups: the home-and-hearth protection reaction force commando members and the house-and-hearth protection commando members.[29] The first sub-group was staffed by farmers, smallholders and their workers, who were responsible for assisting other farmers and smallholders in the event of a farm attack. They would be the first to react to an attack or call for help and remain in action until they could hand over to the area-bound reaction force. The second sub-group was also staffed by farmers, smallholders and their workers, but they were responsible only for their own protection.

The effectiveness of the RPP is reflected in the notable decrease in farm attacks which fell by 40.5% from 1 069 incidents in 2001/02 to 636 incidents in 2005/06. Similarly, farm murders decreased by 41.4% from 140 cases in 2001/02 to 82 cases in 2004/05. This achievement attests to the impact of the RPP and the work of the Priority Committee. However, with the phasing out of the commandos in 2003 and a clear change in government's perception of the problem, the early indications were that the situation was again deteriorating. In 2006/07, the last financial year for which the police reported on farm attacks and related murders, there was a 24.8% increase in the number of attacks (from 636 to 794) and the number of murders increased from 82 in 2004/05 to 88 in 2005/06.[30]

THE CLOSING DOWN OF THE COMMANDOS

The commando system and its composition was always a contentious issue in South Africa's recent history. This was reflected in the serious debate during the development of the new South African defence policy through the White Paper and Defence Review processes in 1995 and 1998 respectively. 

The African National Congress (ANC) had been opposed to the continuation of the commando system, partly because of the role these units had played in support of the apartheid system, but also because the commandos were perceived to represent the security interests of the white farming community only.[31] In chapter 11 of the Defence Review it is stated that:[32]

Special mention needs to be made of the commandos, which now form part of the territorial units, in view of the sensitivity surrounding their name and perceived role. This sensitivity derives from the perception in certain quarters that the commandos were politicised during the apartheid era through frequent deployment in the support of the police.

There was, however, no indication at the time that plans were underfoot to close down the commandos. These units were undoubtedly the cornerstone of the RPP and given the structure and staffing of the RPP the closing down of the commandos would clearly mean the end of this plan. It is against this background that it came as a complete surprise when on 14 February 2003 the President of the Republic of South Africa, in his State of the Nation address at the opening of Parliament, announced that the commando system would be phased out. In his address he said:[33]

Measures will be taken to ensure that the structures meant to support the security agencies such as the Commandos ... are properly regulated to do what they were set up for. In this regard, in order to ensure security for all in the rural areas, including the farmers, government will start in the near future to phase out the SANDF Commandos, at the same time as we create in their place a new system whose composition and ethos accord with the requirements of all rural communities.

Other than referring to a ‘new system' that would ‘accord with the requirements of all rural communities' the President gave no clear indication of what the Commandos would be replaced with. This was apparently left to the Minister of Safety and Security, Charles Nqakula, who in his budget vote speech in Parliament on 10 June 2003, stated that the commandos would be replaced by:

... a revised SAPS reservist system based on the amended National Instruction for Reservists. This system is linked to various initiatives which form part of the National Crime Combating Strategy's normalisation phase, such as the drastic increase in the SAPS personnel figures over the next three years, the restructuring of specialised investigation units, the implementation of sector policing and the establishment of crime combating units for each police area.[34]

At a parliamentary media briefing on 15 February 2005, the Minister confirmed both his own and earlier statements by senior SAPS officers, namely that the commandos would be replaced by a combination of police approaches. This would entail the implementation of the sector policing concept; the area crime combating units; the recruitment and utilisation of police reservists (for purposes of sector policing a new category of reservists was created, namely urban and rural sector police reservists); and an increase in police numbers.[35]

At a meeting on 26 August 2003 between AgriSA and the ministers of Defence and of Safety and Security, AgriSA emphasised that in the process of the SAPS replacing the commandos, ‘they should ensure that a security vacuum does not develop as a result of these changes.' In reply, the Minister of Defence,  Mr Mosiuoa Lekota,  ‘assured  AgriSA  that no commando would be withdrawn before the police are able to take over completely the security responsibility in a particular area.'[36]

In his media briefing on 15 February 2005, the Minister of Safety and Security reiterated that ‘the SANDF Exit/SAPS Entry strategy will be executed in a well-planned fashion so as to avoid a security vacuum (own emphasis).' In a follow-up meeting on 10 February 2006 with the Minister of Safety and Security, AgriSA pointed out that, according to its information, limited progress had been made in rural areas with the introduction of sector policing in most localities where commandos had been closed down.[37]

Between November 2007 and December 2008, at the request of the civil rights organisation, Afriforum, two senior researchers from the Institute for Security Studies set out to establish whether and to what extent Government had kept these promises. They found, at least in the four areas they visited, that a security vacuum had in fact been created:

It is obvious that a security vacuum exists in the areas visited by the research team. This conclusion is based principally on the observation that in none of these areas had all the measures announced by Government been fully implemented and in some areas almost nothing had been done. And despite government assurances that this would not happen, the process of closing down the commandos was carried through.[38]

THE ‘NEW SYSTEM' AND THE NATIONAL RURAL SAFETY STRATEGY (NRSS)

The disbandment of the Commandos meant that the police were required to replace not only the ‘system', but also that a new plan or strategy had to be developed to replace the RPP. The undertaking was that the police would replace the commandos by putting in place the following alternatives:

• a revised SAPS reservist system based on an amendment of the National Instruction for Reservists
• a substantial increase in SAPS personnel figures
• the implementation of sector policing
• the restructuring of specialised investigation units, and
• the establishment of area crime combating units

The National Instruction on the South African Reserve Police Service (No.1 of 2002), provided for a new category of reservists, (i.e. Category D: Rural and Urban Safety.)[39] The National Instruction was already in place at the time of the President's announcement on the commandos and did not happen as a result thereof. From a reading of section 2(2)(d) of this instruction it is clear that the aim with the creation of this category of reservists was to enhance the role of police reservists in both rural and urban security.

The intention, in fact, was to ensure that there would be adequate staffing of sectors for sector policing.[40] As of 2012, a new police reservist policy is apparently underway and early indications are that many of the good intentions in this instruction may not survive the current process. For some reason the draft policy is being delayed at the office of the Minister of Police resulting in a de facto moratorium on the recruitment of reservists.[41]

There was quite a dramatic increase in the number of police officials (sworn officers) between 2001/02 and 2011/12 from approximately 100 000 to 157 472.[42] Overall SAPS personnel increased by 66% from approximately 120 000 in 2001/02 to 199 345 in 2011/12.[43]  However, there are no indications that the additional staff at rural police stations were ever utilised for duties previously performed by the commandos or that their presence contributed in any meaningful way to safety on farms.

Sector policing is supposed to be one of the anchors of the ‘new system', but it took the SAPS seven years to finalise its applicable National Instruction.[44] The long delay in finalising the National Instruction created uncertainty and made it difficult to prioritise and allocate resources for its implementation.

According to the SAPS Annual Report 2011/2012 sector policing has been implemented in 1 056 of the 1125 police stations across the country (i.e. 93,86%).[45] This, however, is not a true reflection of the state of sector policing. These figures do not indicate the extent to which sector policing is properly functioning at each of these police stations or whether it is functioning at all. The SAPS themselves, in an analysis to determine the state of sector policing, found amongst others, the following challenges:

• a lack of common understanding of the concept of sector policing
• a lack of standardisation guidelines for the demarcation of sectors
• a lack of clarity in relation to the roles and functions between community police forums, sub-forums and sector crime forums
• a rigid implementation of sector policing guidelines which does not allow for the varying dynamics of police station areas
• inadequate or a lack of sustainable human and physical resources to support the implementation of this concept, and
• at station level sector policing is used as a replacement for crime prevention units.[46]

It is unclear what the Minister had in mind when, in parliament in 2003, he referred to a restructuring of specialised investigation units. The only restructuring of specialised investigation units that had any direct relevance to the safety and security on farms and smallholdings involved the Serious and Violent Crime Units (SVC units).

The restructuring of the SVC units resulted in its members being ‘decentralised' to the 169 ‘high contact crime' stations.[47] On average only two members were available for each of these stations and in reality this effectively meant the end of these units as a specialised investigative force. This had negative implications for the investigation of the serious crimes committed during farm attacks where these units had an above average detection rate of more than 70%.[48]

The creation of the Area Crime Combating Units (ACCUs) were simply the previously named Public Order Policing (POP) units with a different mandate. Their new mandate included, amongst other operational duties, the responsibility for follow-up operations after farm attacks. The POP units, tasked to manage public events and marches, underwent major restructuring in 2001 and again in 2006.

Due to a perceived reduction in public protests and increasing crime levels at the time, a decision was taken to utilise these units in support of the implementation of the National Crime Combating Strategy (NCCS) which was launched in 2000. The POP units were renamed Area Crime Combating Units (ACCUs), effectively changing their primary focus to crime combating and prevention operations, with crowd management operations becoming a secondary function.[49] This was a convenient way of finding a replacement for the reaction force capability of the commandos.[50]

In 2006 the ACCUs were again restructured when the SAPS Area offices[51] were closed down and they were re-named Crime Combating Units (CCU's). In the process the number of units were drastically reduced (e.g. in Gauteng only three out of seven units remained while the total number of operational personnel was reduced from 1 383 to 614).[52] Ironically, by this time public protests were again escalating and becoming increasingly violent.[53] During 2011/12 there were on average three violent public crowd management incidents every day in South Africa. This has effectively meant an end to the deployment of the CCUs for rural protection and they are now fully deployed for crowd management and public order operations.

The National Rural Safety Strategy (NRSS) was approved in 2011, almost nine years after the President's announcement effectively ended the Rural Protection Plan (RPP).[54] It is a fairly comprehensive strategy, but unlike the RPP it's focus is on rural communities in general and not specifically on farms and smallholdings.

For example, it refers not only to farmers and farmworkers, but also includes ‘residents within rural communities'.[55] This is of course to give effect to what the President referred to in 2003 when he said that the composition and ethos of the ‘new system' must ‘accord with the requirements of all rural communities.' 

By broadening the scope of rural safety the NRSS is largely duplicating what the National Crime Combating Strategy (NCCS) is supposed to be doing and is less focused on the particular problem of farm attacks. The NRSS is further weakened by its dependence on a range of police practices and units that are not well implemented or properly functioning, such as sector policing, police reservists and crime combating units and the absence of a dedicated investigating capability such as the Serious and Violent Crime units were able to provide.

In 2005 Dr Jonny Steinberg, an independent researcher, almost prophetically warned how the closing of the commandos, combined with a different set of priorities for the police, would weaken their ability to police the agricultural sector:

A combined reading of the SAPS national instruction on the police reserve, together with its crime reduction and police action targets, tells us that, for better or for worse, the closing of the Commandos will see a transfer of policing resources from rural to urban sectors of police stations throughout the country. The result will be a deterioration in the policing of rural sectors, and in particular of agricultural crime. The potential gain is that residents of rural town centres will be better policed.[56]

CONCLUSION

It is obvious that the government no longer considers the ongoing attacks on farms and the murder of persons involved in the farming community as a priority. This is in spite of President Zuma's statement in parliament during May 2009 that food security is included in priority three of South Africa's Medium Term Strategic Framework for 2009-2014. The strategic and operational response to the threat of farm attacks and murders is clearly not based on the acknowledgement that the farming community is disproportionally targeted when compared to the victimisation risk of other citizens or groups in South Africa. The economic and other implications such as loss of production and food security are equally underestimated.

It should be clearly understood that the farming community is a very specific group, very much the same as you would find bankers, doctors, teachers and police officials. The fact is that farmers are twice as likely to be murdered than policemen in South Africa and more than three times as likely as any other citizen. If any of these groups would be attacked and killed at the rate this is happening to farmers there would be a national outcry. A good example is the outrage last year when a number of policemen were murdered in short succession. The Minister of Police organised a national summit on police killings and part of the outcome was a so-called Ten Point Plan focused on the reduction of police killings.

This situation should be recognised for the national crisis that it is and therefore deserving of priority status and focused attention. That would mean the implementation of a strategy or plan that focuses on the specific problem of farm attacks and associated violent crimes. Such an approach cannot be allowed to disappear within overall or general crime combating strategies such as the National Crime Combating Strategy and the National Rural Safety Strategy.

Dr Johan Burger, Senior researcher, Crime and Justice Programme, Institute for Security Studies. This article is taken from the Solidarity Research Institute report "An overview of farm attacks in South Africa and the potential impact thereof on society." The full document can be accessed here - PDF.

ENDNOTES

[1] Nathi Mthethwa, Minister of Police, at a press conference on the release of the official  crime statistics, Cape Town, 20 September 2012.

[2] Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Farm Attacks, 31 July 2003, Criminal Justice Monitor 2003, (accessed 9 November 2012), 4.

[3] Ibid, 3.

[4] Johan Burger & Henri Boshoff, The state's response to crime and public security in South Africa, Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies,  (accessed 9 November 2012), 11.

[5] The NOCOC was the joint interdepartmental operational structure until 2000, representing the South African Police Service, the South African National Defence Force, Correctional Services, and the departments of Welfare and Justice. In 2000 NOCOC was replaced by the Joint Operational and Intelligence Structure (JOINTS). The JOINTS is representative of the above departments as well as the rest of the departments of the Justice Crime Prevention and Security Cluster (JCPS).

[6] Ibid, 11-12.

[7] South African Police Service, Manual for crime definitions, Consolidation Notice

 2/2012, Pretoria: National Commissioner, March 2012, 188.

[8] Rudolph Zinn, Home Invasion: Robbers disclose what you should know, Cape

  Town:Tafelberg, 2010, 1.

[9] Ibid, Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Farm Attacks, 11.

[10] South African Police Service, National Rural Safety Strategy, Pretoria: Division

 Visible Policing, 2011, 8. [Copy received from the SAPS]

[11] Ibid, Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Farm Attacks, 2.

[12] South African Police Service, Annual Report 2006/2007, Department of Safety and

  Security, Pretoria: Government Printer, 2007, 50.

[13] Ibid.

[14] Ibid.

[15] All the TAUSA statistics in this report were provided to the author by Major General (Ret.), Chris van Zyl, formerly from the SANDF and now Assistant General Manager of TAUSA.

[16] South African Police Service, An Analysis of the National Crime Statistics:  Addendum to the Annual report 2011/2012, SAPS Strategic Management, Head Office. Pretoria: Internal Publications, September 2012. See p.9 for the percentage of murders resulting from aggravated robbery and Annexure A, p.59, for the real figures on murder and aggravated robbery.

[17] Ibid, Report of the Committee of Inquiry into Farm Attacks, Summary, 418-419.

[18] Ibid, TAUSA statistics.

[19] Statistics South Africa, Census of Commercial Agriculture: Financial and production statistics, Report No. 11-02-01 (2007), (accessed 9 November 2012), Table 8.1, 48.

[20] Pieter Mulder, Deputy Minister of Agriculture, Forestry and Fisheries, Farmers  Weekly, Dr Pieter Mulder on agriculture, 19 April 2012, (accessed 11 November 2012).

[21] Ernst Janovsky, ABSA Head of Agribusiness, The Mercury, South Africa's ever-  shrinking farmers, 31 October, 2011,   (accessed 12 November 2012).

[22] Shadrack Moephuli, CEO of the Agricultural Research Council (ARC), Africa Growth Institute, Technology hides crisis in farming sector, says expert, 17 January 2012, (accessed 12 November 2012).

[23] Ibid, South African Police Service, An Analysis of the National Crime Statistics: Addendum to the Annual Report 2011/2012, 7-8.

[24] South African Police Service, Annual Report 2011/2012, SAPS Strategic Management, Head Office. Pretoria: Internal Publications, September 2012, 79-81. 

[25] Martin Schönteich & Jonny Steinberg, Attacks on farms and smallholdings: an evaluation of the Rural Protection Plan, Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2000 11.

[26] Ibid, 19.

[27] Ibid, Johan Burger & Henri Boshoff, The state's response to crime and public security in South Africa, 11.

[28] Ibid, Martin Schönteich & Jonny Steinberg, Attacks on farms and smallholdings: an evaluation of the Rural Protection Plan, 20-22.

[29] Ibid, 21.

[30] Ibid, South African Police Service, Annual Report 2006/2007, 50.

[31] Ibid, Johan Burger & Henri Boshoff, The state's response to crime and public security in South Africa, 20.

[32] South Africa, Defence Review, Pretoria: Department of Defence, 1998, 45.

[33] Jonny Steinberg, After the commandos: the future of rural policing in South Africa, ISS Monograph 120, Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies 2005, 1.

[34] Ibid, Johan Burger & Henri Boshoff, The state's response to crime and public security in South Africa, 20.

[35] Ibid.

[36] Ibid.

[37] Ibid.

[38] Ibid, 28.

[39] South African Police Service, National Instruction 1/2002, The South African Reserve Police Service, Division Crime Prevention, Pretoria: National Commissioner, 2002, 2.

[40] The author was an Assistant Commissioner (Major General) in the South African Police Service at the time and directly involved in the creation of Category D police reservists. The category was initially referred to as ‘urban and rural sector police reservists'.

[41] Ibid, South African Police Service, Annual Report 2011/2012, 63. Also based on information from an anonymous member of the South African Police Service, 11 November, 2012.

[42] Ibid, South African Police Service, Annual Report 2011/2012, iv.

[43] Ibid.

[44] South African Police Service, National Instruction 3/2009, Sector Policing, Division Visible Policing, Pretoria: National Commissioner, 2009.

[45] Ibid, South African Police Service, Annual Report 2011/2012, 67.

[46] Ibid, 67-68.

[47] Presentation by Director Hannes Swart, 2007, South African Police Service, Efficiency Services, ISS Conference on Key Issues and Developments in Policing in South Africa in 2007, Pretoria, 31 October.

[48] Based on the author's experience as chairperson of the Priority Committee on Rural Safety.

[49] South African Police Service, Policy on the Establishment and Functioning of Area Crime Combating Units (ACCU's), Division: Operational Response Service, 2004,1. Also se Bilkis Omar, Crowd control: Can our public order still deliver, SA Crime Quarterly No 15, March 2006, 7-12, 9.

[50] Ibid, Johan Burger & Henri Boshoff, The state's response to crime and public

  security in South Africa, 15.

[51] The Area Offices of SAPS were created during 1995 to replace the District Commandant Offices of the former South African Police. It had the responsibility to oversee on average 25-30 police stations in terms of operational, logistical, administrative and other support services. It also housed various specialised units such as the Serious and Violent Crime (SVC) Units, Public Order Police (POP) Units and the Family Violence, Child Protection and Sexual Offences (FCS) Units.

[52] Bilkis Omar, SAPS Costly restructuring: A review of public order policing capacity, ISS Monograph Series No 138, Pretoria: Institute for Security Studies, 2007, 25.

[53] See in general Bilkis Omar, SAPS Costly restructuring: A review of public order  policing capacity.

[54] South African Police Service, National Rural Safety Strategy, Division Visible Policing, 2011.

[55] Ibid, 1.

[56] Jonny Steinberg, After the commandos: the future of rural policing in South Africa, 58.

Click here to sign up to receive our free daily headline email newsletter