Saai condemns senseless, cruel murder on Free State farm manager
5 October 2020
The organisation for family farmers Saai condemns the senseless, cruel murder outside Paul Roux on the 21-year old Free State farm manager Bredin Horner. It did not only have repercussions throughout South Africa but even in Europe and North America. In so far as the English media reports more about the nature and extent of farm murders, more serious questions are being asked about the humanitarian crisis and the government’s handling thereof.
Saai participates almost weekly in international digital conferences regarding farm murders and expropriation without compensation and flagged this as one of the most pressing questions in agriculture in the southern hemisphere last year in Rome with the launching of the UN’s Decade of Family Famers. Saai is therefore thankful that one of its network partners, AfriForum, after nine years of awareness campaigns about farm murders, just succeeded in being recognised as an interested non-governmental organisation by the UN and with access to debates. Saai will work closely with AfriForum to let the voice of family farmers of all races be heard on international platforms where the government and the state neglected them.
Since President Cyril Ramaphosa denied in September 2018 at the UN’s General Meeting in New York that farm murders in South Africa are a problem, exposure of the gruesome incidents surprisingly increased in foreign media. Saai plans a second international tour to talk to governments in the northern hemisphere about strategies to force the ANC to recognise the problem and do something about it.
The ANC created the climate wherein runaway statistics for farm attacks (average every second day since 2000) and farm murders (average every fifth day since 2000) caused a massive economic and welfare crisis in the rural areas. It was the ANC that started with “Kill the farmer, kill the boer”; they have never rejected or renounced it and are now in no position to rebuke the EFF about it. It is also the ANC that refuses to see the problem and in the parliamentary debate about farm murders shouted the most insensitive, inflammatory and shocking interjections about it. This is what needs to be exposed to the international community .