ARE FARM MURDERS RACIALLY MOTIVATED?

Ernst Roets – Deputy CEO at AfriForum Guest – Dewa Mavhingha- Senior South Africa Researcher Human Rights Watch Despite the fact that the government acknowledged in the 1990s that farm murders are a crisis that must be prioritised, the commando system was terminated in 2003, without any reasons being communicated for this decision. The promise that this structure would be replaced by a similar structure that would fall under the South African Police Service (SAPS), has to date not been carried out. Since then, twelve years have passed.Although there was a slight drop in farm murders, it appeared that there was an increase of about 25% was in farm attacks in 2007. In the same year, the police department decided that no further statistics on farm attacks and farms murders may be released. For this reason we say that farm murders were virtually deprioritised by the government.