According to AfriForum, the number of white farmers killed this year was 72, this is including the murder of another farmer yesterday. The number of farm attacks was more than 340 and they are said to be typically characterised by extreme brutality, rape and torture.
Photo: Steve Hofmeyr Twitter "The Cape is serious this morning"
Major roads in South Africa were brought to a crawl on Monday by thousands of white farmers protesting a wave of brutal farm attacks in the country. The Black Monday protest, backed by civil rights group AfriForum, saw convoys of hundreds of slow-moving trucks blocking traffic on highways leading to farming areas in Cape Town, Pretoria and Johannesburg, the Associated Press reported.
“A farmer has 4.5 times more chance of being murdered in South Africa, than an average South African,” AfriForum spokesman Ian Cameron told a crowd of hundreds gathered at the Afrikaners’ Voortrekker Monument in Pretoria, according to the African News Agency.
Photo: boncourage.estate Twitter
But the BBC's Pumza Fihlani in Johannesburg says the protests are already causing racial divisions after some demonstrators were seen carrying the flag from the apartheid era, when South Africa was governed by its white minority and black people were not allowed to vote.
The idea that white farmers are being targeted has been going around for some time. The fact-checking site Africa Check found back in 2013 that white people in South Africa are less likely to be murdered than any other racial group.
The spokesman for the priority crime police unit, known as the Hawks, Brigadier Hangwani Mlaudzi, told the BBC's Milton Nkosi that the police did not keep specific statistics about farm killings.
"Cases are not classified as farm murders. They form part of all murders under investigation," he said.