White farmers 'being wiped out'
Malema lauds Bob, says SA will copy Zim's land seizures
Next, same as Zim, agricultural collapse and food crises... More than half Zimbabwe's population is in need of food aid today as a result of the white farm seizures.
South Africa: White farmers 'being wiped out'
Over 3,000 have been killed since 1994. Now the ANC is accused of fanning the hate.
A man walks through a field of crosses erected near Pretoria, South Africa,
to honour mostly white farmers who have died in farm attacks over past decade.
THE gunmen walked silently through the orchard. Skirting a row of burnt-out tyres, set ablaze months earlier to keep the budding fruit from freezing, they drew their old .38 revolvers.
Inside his farmhouse Pieter Cillier, 57, slept with his 14-year-old daughter Nikki at his side. His 12-year-old son JD was having a sleepover with two teenagers in an adjoining room.
As the intruders broke in, the farmer woke. He rushed to stop them, only to be shot twice in the chest.
In his death throes he would have seen his killers and then his children standing over him, screaming and crying.
The attackers, who were drug addicts, simply disappeared into the night. Cillier’s murder, at Christmas, was barely reported in the local press. It was, after all, everyday news.
Death has stalked South Africa’s white farmers for years. The number murdered since the end of apartheid in 1994 has passed 3,000.
In neighbouring Zimbabwe, a campaign of intimidation that began in 2000 has driven more than 4,000 commercial farmers off their land, but has left fewer than two dozen dead.
The vulnerability felt by South Africa’s 40,000 remaining white farmers intensified earlier this month when Julius Malema, head of the African National Congress’s (ANC’s) youth league, opened a public rally by singing Dubula Ibhunu, or Shoot the Boer, an apartheid-era anthem, that was banned by the high court last week.
Malema’s timing could hardly have been worse. Last weekend in the remote farming community of Colenso, in KwaZulu-Natal, Nigel Ralfe, 71, a dairy farmer, and his wife Lynette, 64, were gunned down as they milked their cows. He was critically injured; she died.
That same day a 46-year-old Afrikaner was shot through his bedroom window as he slept at his farm near Potchefstroom. A few days later a 61-year-old was stabbed to death in his bed at a farm in Limpopo.
The resurrection of Dubula Ibhunu, defended by senior ANC officials as little more then a sentimental old struggle song, has been greeted with alarm by Tom Stokes, of the opposition Democratic Alliance. He said the ANC’s continued association with the call to kill Boers could not be justified.
“Any argument by the ANC that this song is merely a preservation of struggle literature rings hollow in the face of farming families who have lost wives, mothers and grandmothers,” he added.
He was supported by Anton Alberts of the right-wing Freedom Front Plus party: “Malema’s comments are creating an atmosphere that is conducive to those who want to commit murder. He’s an accessory to the wiping out of farmers in South Africa.”
Rossouw Cillier, Pieter’s brother, bristled as he pointed to the bullet holes in the panelled kitchen of the farmhouse near Ceres in the Western Cape. “They shot him through the fridge from the back door — the bullets came straight through here, into his heart. He never had a chance,” he said.
A successful apple and pear grower, he believes his community is living on borrowed time: “More white farmers have been killed than British soldiers in Afghanistan and Iraq. Yes, we are at war here.”
His brother’s farmhouse is now shuttered and empty. “I can’t spend time here. We’ll have to sell. This farm has been in our family for generations but it must go. Who’ll manage it? The children will never come back here. They held their own father as he died in front of them. Will they ever get over that?”
As we walked across the orchard, fruit destined for the shelves of Tesco and Sainsbury’s in the UK was still being picked. A tractor passed a 10ft cross erected in honour of the murdered farmer.
“It lights up at night,” Rossouw said. “My brother was a religious man. It’s all that’s left of him here.”
Across South Africa many farmers feel endangered. In Northern Province a tribute has been created beneath an enormous sign with the stark Afrikaans word “plaasmoorde” — farm killings. Thousands of white wooden crosses have been planted across a mountainside, one for each fallen farmer.
Recently the government’s department of rural development has been airing proposals to nationalise productive farmland as a “national asset”. Critics claim it is designed to deflect criticism from the ruling ANC’s failures.
“It’s a lot easier talking about nationalising farms than building decent houses, making clean water come out of taps or honouring promises to redistribute farm plots to millions of landless poor,” said a spokesman for AgriSA, the farmers’ union.
On the outskirts of Ceres there are few groceries in the township store — tins of pilchards, baked beans, some dried biscuits. A group of teenage boys sit on the burnt-out remains of a Ford Escort. This is where Cillier’s killers gathered, in a shebeen, a drinking club, where they fortified themselves with cheap hooch before they set off to rob him. They escaped with nothing.
According to Rossouw Cillier the most telling detail is that his brother was unarmed when they attacked. “If we brandish a weapon, we’ll go to prison, not them. What did they gain from this murder? It was an act as pointless as their lives.”
Malema lauds Bob, says SA will copy Zim's land seizures
Malema lauds Bob, says SA will copy Zim's land seizures
ANC Youth League President Julius Malema yesterday endorsed Zimbabwean President Robert Mugabe's economic policies - and threatened to import them to South Africa and to nationalise white-owned farms and mines.
In a fiery speech at a netball complex in Harare's Mbare township, Malema told a cheering 2000-strong crowd of Zanu-PF youths that, after his visit to Zimbabwe he was going to intensify his campaign for the confiscation of farms and mines in South Africa.
"In SA we are just starting. Here in Zimbabwe you are already very far. The land question has been addressed. We are very happy that today you can account for more than 300000 new farmers against the 4000 who used to dominate agriculture. We hear you are now going straight to the mines. That's what we are going to be doing in South Africa," Malema said amid cheers.
"We want the mines. They have been exploiting our minerals for a long time. Now it's our turn to also enjoy from these minerals. They are so bright, they are colourful, we refer to them as white people, maybe their colour came as a result of exploiting our minerals and perhaps if some of us can get opportunities in these minerals we can develop some nice colour like them."
Only five months ago, Malema said Mugabe should go - but yesterday he endorsed the Zimbabwean ruler, whose government has killed thousands of those opposed to Zanu-PF rule and overseen the destruction of the economy through land seizures.
Malema meets Mugabe tomorrow for talks before returning home. Today, he will visit farms and mines in a move calculated to fuel his campaign for nationalisation in South Africa.
Malema - who was introduced at the rally as a "young revolutionary icon" - said Mugabe was a hero in the mould of former Cuban leader Fidel Castro and his successor, brother Raul, because he was "not afraid of imperialists".
He also paid tribute to South African President Jacob Zuma, former president Nelson Mandela and Mandela's former wife Winnie - while lambasting Zimbabwean Prime Minister Morgan Tsvangirai, whom he described as an ally of "imperialists".
The youth league leader's attack on Tsvangirai could compromise Zuma's mediation efforts in continuing talks between Mugabe and Tsvangirai on a unity government.
"We salute President Mugabe for standing firm against imperialists. The reason why they want him to go is because he has started attending to real issues," Malema said.
"To them he can stay in power for 100 years as long as he doesn't talk about the economy and addressing real issues."
In November, Malema said Mugabe must go. "He must step down - we need a new president in Zim," he said at the time.
"Zanu-PF is not the problem, the problem is the old man who is refusing to leave power," Malema said.
"And I don't know why the youth of that country are not taking him on."
However, yesterday Malema said that Mugabe was a hero.
He said Mugabe and Zuma, together with the ANC and Zanu-PF, had fought in the "trenches' together against colonial regimes and shared a common history with Swapo in Namibia, Frelimo in Mozambique and the MPLA in Angola.
He claimed western countries wanted to destroy Zanu-PF - and then deal with the ANC and other liberation movements to put surrogate parties in power, in order to retain control of resources.
Shifting attention to his homeland, Malema said SA was in desperate need of across-the-board transformation and fundamental reform, because the economy and even the judiciary and media were still "white-controlled".
He said "white males" were dominating those areas and were even banning the "singing of liberation struggle songs".
That, he said, showed democracy was too qualified in South Africa.
Malema said the ANC would not stop singing the "ayesab'amagwala, dubul' ibhunu" (Shoot the Boer) song, despite a court ruling against it and were prepared to go to jail for it.
"The judiciary is still controlled by white males who are refusing to change.
"The economy is still controlled by white males who are refusing to change and the media is also still controlled by white males who are refusing to change," Malema said.
"We can no longer sing liberation songs in South Africa because we will be arrested for undermining the courts. Now we have to go to Zimbabwe, Mozambique and other countries, like we did during exile days, to sing liberation struggle songs."
"We will never retreat. If it means singing this song leads straight into jail, we are prepared to go there. They can never tell which song we must sing!"
Yesterday morning Malema visited Zimbabwe's North Korean-built Heroes Acre, a burial ground for liberation struggle fighters, and a bombed house in Avondale suburb where ANC exiles lived.
He denounced political violence and claimed Zanu-PF would win free and fair elections if they were held in Zimbabwe.
He said Zimbabwe must defy sanctions like Cuba and "stand firm".
He then launched a withering attack on the media, saying they could write what they wanted, and that he did not care. He said Zanu-PF youths should not care about what the media said.
"You, the youths of Zanu-PF, must defend the gains of the revolution. You must be focused. You must be militant, radical and resolute," Malema said.
"We don't care about what the imperialist media write. They can write what they want.
"We are not products of the media, but of the struggle.
"So let them write what they want to write. We don't need a London newspaper to tell us who Mugabe is," said Malema.
"We don't need the so-called independent media to tell us who Zuma is. We know them."
Malema chanted Mugabe's and Zuma's names repeatedly during his rousing address, and closed by singing Dubul' ibhunu and Awuleth' umshini wami, to hysterical cheers.
Next, same as Zim, agricultural collapse and food crises... More than half Zimbabwe's population is in need of food aid today as a result of the white farm seizures.
