Parliamentary Report Sidelines Brutal Attacks on White Farmers, Casting Them as Villains Amid Allegations of Police Complicity
A brutal wave of violence targeting South Africa’s farming communities, particularly white farmers, has been met with a parliamentary report that critics say not only fails to address the crisis but twists the narrative to vilify the victims.
The report, debated in the National Assembly on July 15, 2025, was meant to respond to a petition by Petrus Sitho, a farm safety activist, calling for urgent investigation into farm attacks and murders.
Instead, it has sparked outrage for its focus on livestock theft and allegations of farmer misconduct, while downplaying the brutal, often racially charged assaults that have left rural communities living in fear.
Petrus Sitho, director of the Rural Safe Guard Alliance and leader of PPS STOP Farm Killings (NPC) and Agri-Alert SA, presented his petition to the Portfolio Committees on Police and Agriculture, demanding action on what he described as a “rural safety crisis.”
The petition highlighted the extreme brutality of farm attacks, premeditated crimes often involving torture, rape, and murder, disproportionately affecting white farmers.
Yet, the resulting report, critics argue, has been “hijacked” to shift focus away from these atrocities.
Dr. Corné Mulder of the Freedom Front Plus, a political party advocating for Afrikaner rights, condemned the report during the parliamentary debate, stating it “doesn’t address special priority crimes or create any framework around farm attacks.”
He called it a betrayal of the petition’s intent, accusing it of portraying farmers as “villains.”
The report’s recommendations, detailed in a document obtained from parliamentary records, emphasize issues like stock theft and the need for oversight of farm workers’ treatment, notably in Recommendation 12, which calls for “targeted oversight visits” to investigate alleged human rights abuses by farmers against workers.
This framing, Mulder argued, paints white farmers as oppressors while ignoring the gruesome reality of farm attacks. “This report doesn’t say a single word about supporting the farmer, not one word,” he said, announcing the Freedom Front Plus’s decision to vote against it.
Farm attacks in South Africa are not a new phenomenon, but their severity and apparent targeting of white farmers have fueled claims of persecution and even genocide. Recent incidents, such as the rape and murder of a 79-year-old woman in Van Wyksdorp in July 2025, exposes the crisis.
Social media posts have highlighted the brutality, with one user noting, “Farm attacks are uniquely brutal, increasingly well-planned, and are destroying the sense of safety in rural communities.”
Another post referenced the murder of David Netsalappa, a 62-year-old Limpopo farmer killed while searching for stolen livestock, as a stark example of police failure to protect rural residents.
Compounding the issue are allegations of complicity and corruption within the South African Police Service (SAPS).
Critics, including activists like Sitho, point to past incidents where SAPS officers were implicated in farm attacks, either through negligence or active participation.
More recently, the police have been criticized for categorizing farm attacks as mere “house robberies,” a practice that obscures their targeted nature and minimizes their severity in official statistics.
The parliamentary report notes that only 35% of stock theft arrests in 2023 led to successful prosecutions, raising questions about SAPS’s effectiveness and integrity in handling rural crime.
The report’s failure to prioritize farm attacks as a distinct category of crime has drawn particular ire.
Despite acknowledging their “extreme brutality and disproportionate violence,” it explicitly states that “no perception should be created that farm murders constitute a special class of crime.”
This stance, critics argue, dismisses the unique vulnerabilities of rural communities, where isolation and delayed police response times, often due to inadequate vehicles and poor road infrastructure, amplify the impact of these attacks.
The document notes that only 40% of SAPS vehicles in rural areas are suitable for the terrain, and response times lag significantly compared to urban centers.
For white farmers, the report’s focus on livestock theft and worker mistreatment feels like a deliberate deflection from their lived reality.
AfriForum, a minority rights organization, has called for farm attacks to be classified as a national priority crime, citing cases like the 2010 murder of Attie, Wilna, and two-year-old Wilmien Potgieter in Lindley as evidence of racially motivated violence.
Posts on social media echo this sentiment, with one user claiming a 47% increase in farm attacks since 2018, often with racial motivations.
While the report cites research suggesting economic motives like theft of cash and firearms drive these crimes, it sidesteps allegations of racial targeting, a silence that fuels distrust among white farmers who feel abandoned by the state.
The broader implications are stark. Farm attacks threaten not only personal safety but also South Africa’s food security and economy, as farmers play a critical role in agricultural production.
The report acknowledges the “far-reaching consequences” of rural violence but fails to propose concrete measures to protect farmers, instead urging SAPS to audit rural policing capacity and improve animal identification systems to combat stock theft.
These recommendations, while practical, do little to address the immediate danger faced by farmers and their families.
The controversy surrounding the report has also drawn international attention.
U.S. President Donald Trump and South African-born billionaire Elon Musk have amplified claims of persecution, with Trump issuing an executive order in February 2025 offering refugee status to Afrikaners including ethnic minorities, citing “unjust racial discrimination.”
While the South African government has rejected these claims, the parliamentary report’s failure to address farm attacks head-on only deepens the perception of systemic neglect.
As South Africa grapples with this crisis, the voices of farmers like those represented by Sitho’s petition remain sidelined.
The report’s focus on secondary issues like stock theft and worker rights, while important, ignores the bloodshed staining rural communities.
For white farmers, the message is clear; their suffering is not a priority, and the narrative has been rewritten to cast them as the problem rather than the victims.
With SAPS under scrutiny for corruption and inaction, and a government accused of turning a blind eye, the fight for justice in South Africa’s farmlands remains an uphill battle.
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