SA farm attacks claim more lives than Afghan war

Farm attacks in South Africa this year have claimed more lives than the war in Afghanistan, an agricultural organisation said in a report on Thursday.

A total of 91 British soldiers died this year in the war in Afghanistan, compared to 111 people who were killed in farm attacks in South Africa over the same period, said Chris van Zyl, assistant manager of the Transvaal Landbou Union (TLU).

Beeld newspaper reported that over the past eight years, 282 British soldiers died in Afghanistan, quoting numbers provided by the BBC broadcaster.

But in just four years, 292 people died in farm attacks in South Africa, said Van Zyl, adding that these numbers were "conservative".

Van Zyl said these statistics were given to the TLU by the police, who did not want the organisation to make it public. - Sapa

3 farm attacks in 10 days - 5 November 2009

One man has been murdered and three injured in three farm attacks near Lephalale in Limpopo in 10 days.

On October 21 Jan Potgieter, 65, was killed in Marken. On October 24, Pieter Botha of Mokolo Safaris was badly injured in an attack. Izak and Mariaan Jansen van Vuuren of the farm Clanwilliam were attacked while going home after church last Sunday. Izak was apparently so badly injured he would have to undergo extensive facial plastic surgery.

Genocidal black gangs target SA minority families

Updated Nov 8 2009:

Known death toll: 3,106* at farms, smallholdings and peri-urban areas since 1994…

It’s become a very clear pattern since 1994: well-organised, armed gangs of young black males go through considerable trouble to break into rural, peri-urban and suburban properties occupied by members of the most visible minority group in South Africa, and which the black population refers to as “Boers” (their generic term for all whites). A total of 74,595 of these attacks have been logged by the SAPS statistics against families since 2002. Compare these with the death-rates during the apartheid era from 1948 to 1994, when a total 900 political murders were recorded, according to the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. In addition, we have also logged 3,106 murders on smallholdings, peri-urban regions and commercial farms since 1994. All these murders, often accompanied by horrendous long-term tortures and mutilations, are referred to as ‘ordinary crimes’ by the SAPS…