'Farm violence organised'

By M. S. Prabhakara

CAPE TOWN, MARCH 31. A new spin has been given to the problem of rural violence in South Africa by the claim by an organisation - Action: Stop Farm Attacks - that such attacks are being orchestrated by a clandestine Johannesburg-based group, `Black Jack'; hired killers are being paid rands 2,000 by the group for every white farmer killed; and there is indeed an `instruction video' on how such attacks are to be mounted.

This was among the points made at a media briefing on Thursday by Mr. Werner Weber, chairman of Action: Stop Farm Attacks - a structure formed last year by Agri SA, the Transvaal Agricultural Union and the Agricultural Employers' Organisation, with the specific objective of focussing solely on farm attacks. According to a `Memorandum on Farm Attacks and the Implications thereof for Commercial Agriculture and Food Production in Southern Africa,' prepared in November last year by a `panel of experts' appointed by Stop Farm Attacks, 870 murders were committed in the course of 4,624 farm attacks between 1991 and 1999. Updating these figures, Mr. Weber said in the last ten years, 1,044 farmers had been killed in 5,544 recorded farm attacks. This meant that every seventh farm household had experienced an attack.

Violence on farms is undoubtedly a serious problem in South Africa. White farmers (referred to as `employers'), their dependents and black farm workers (`employees') have been killed in some of the most gruesome attacks. Black farm labourers and even ordinary black inhabitants in the vicinity of farms are subjected to violence though such incidents do not receive the same prominence. Such violence is not surprising given the history of violence and deceit that accompanied the appropriation of native lands by the settlers and colonists.

Contrary to the official view that such attacks and killings are part of the larger problem of crime and have to be tackled so, Mr. Weber maintained that there was more to these attacks than routine criminality. Police had a document which showed that there was a group called `Black Jack' which paid rands 2,000 for every white farmer killed. The document, apparently an internal police message, dated 4 April, 2000, on `possible attacks by employees on farmers', was sent from the `Project Co-ordinator, Northern Free State' to `Information Managers, Northern Free State,' with the instruction that the information be passed on to the `Farm Unit, Crime Prevention and all other members on ground levels.' A flavour of how `information' is received and passed on in such messages can be had in this passage: ``Information is received from an employee that a group of unknown black men told him that they belong to a group named `Black Jack'...''

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