The sudden wave of farm attacks in the Western Cape is extremely disturbing and raises the question of whether this evil has now spread to this province as well, Dr Corné Mulder, leader of the FF Plus party in the Western Cape, said.
The ANC regime, admirers of Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe, remains complicit in the ongoing campaign of ethnic cleansing, in that they have done nothing to address the growing scourge.
Although the police have access to the statistics on farm murders and attacks, they refused to disclose the figures to the FF Plus.
In the 2015/2016 crime report, there were 49 farm murders and 446 attacks on farms. It creates the impression that there was a significant increase in the number of farm murders and that the police want to avoid addressing the issue in public.
In the most recent incident Mr Joubert Conradie (47), a farmer of Klapmuts near Stellenbosch, was shot dead on his farm Uitkyk. And just ten days before, Mr Mark Fagan (46) from Klein Dassenberg near Philadelphia, was also shot dead.
Several weeks ago, a farmer from Ceres in the Cold Bokkeveld, was attacked and stabbed with a knife several times in his roadside stall, as FWM reported. The farmer miraculously survived the attack.
Dr Mulder says that the Cape has been holding its breath for quite some time in anticipation of farm attacks spreading to the province, until now such attacks have mostly been unheard of.
“These three farm attacks, however, have set alarm bells ringing,” he said. “The FF Plus wants to caution local farmers to approach safety on their farms in a new way, to increase security measures and to always be vigilant as farm attacks can occur anywhere in the country.
“The FF Plus also calls on the police to do everything in their power to find the offenders so as to gather intelligence on the possibility of any more attacks on farms. Drastic plans are needed to prevent the wave of farm attacks spilling over to the Western Cape.”
Not only white South Africans have reason to believe that crime in South Africa is escalating beyond the government’s capabilities to deal with it and consequently faith in the police is at an all-time low.
The latest release of crime statistics for 2016/2017 indicate that the figures for trio crimes – carjacking, robberies at residential premises and robberies at non-residential premises – the three crimes that the public fears the most, have increased for the fifth consecutive year with an average of 51,1 percent.
What is disturbing is that over the last five years, the trio crimes have respectively increased as follows: carjacking with 77,5 percent, robberies at residential premises with 33,2 percent and robberies at non-residential premises with 42,6 percent.
According to the latest crime statistics, the figures for murder (1,8 percent), attempted murder (0,4 percent), carjacking (14,5 percent), robberies at residential premises (7,3 percent) and robberies at non-residential premises (5,0 percent) have all increased for the fifth consecutive year.
The Minister of Police, Fikile Mbalula, is all talk and no action, the party spokesperson said. While Mbalula says the police must be professional, disciplined and held accountable, little has been put into practice.
“The crime situation in South Africa is too serious to merely rely on political rhetoric to create the impression that the problem of crime will be addresses, drastic action is what is needed now,” says Pieter Groenewald, FF Plus spokesperson for the police.
“In the 2016/17 year under record, 2,1 million crimes that could be classified as serious offences were committed in South Africa. In contrast, there are only 27 000 detectives in the police force. How on earth can a mere 27 000 detectives investigate and exact justice in so many cases?
“The Minister of Police, Fikile Mbalula, admitted that former commissioner, George Fivaz, was the last proper police commissioner. He also admitted that since then, none of the commissioners were up to standard.
“And who appoints the police commissioner? The president of the country. Clearly, here political agendas have precedence over the interests of the people of South Africa.
“Today I want to pronounce that the situation will only improve once a competent national police commissioner, from the ranks of the police, is appointed.
“At the moment, only 20 percent of all reported crimes are successfully prosecuted. That means that 80 percent of the criminals in South Africa are getting away with what they’ve done,” says Groenewald.
White farmers are tired of being called land thieves and are willing to produce their title deeds to show that they are not guilty, the president of the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU) said earlier.
“Us farmers are tired of being called criminals who stole the land,” Louis Meintjes said in a statement. “We all have our deeds and paid for the land.”
Government earned revenue from duties and taxes from each land transaction, and local authorities milked them for rates, he said. “Therefore, farmers do not need to tolerate any of these false allegations anymore.”
The Western Cape is already home to a third of the country’s police stations where the most killings have been recorded and it’s also home to South Africa’s longstanding murder capital, the black township Nyanga.
Seven out of the top 10 police stations where the highest numbers of murders have been recorded are also in the Western Cape. The Western Cape is home to 10 of the top 30 stations all in black areas, while Gauteng is second with seven stations and KwaZulu-Natal third with six stations.
Gauteng is the province with the most number of police stations featuring in the country’s 30 stations where the highest number of rapes were recorded, all in black areas. There are nine Gauteng police stations among the top 30.
