A Heartbreaking Testimony of the Ongoing Struggle Against Farm Murders in South Africa: Plaasmoorde monument
To Remember the Dead and Fight to Protect the Living.
South African farmers are one of the world's most vulnerable occupational groups due to a rise in farm murders. Plaasmoorde Monument is a memorial located north of Pretoria that symbolizes the growing problem of violence and racial discrimination against white farmers.
North of Pretoria lies the Plaasmoorde Monument, where a white cross is erected for each white farmer murdered on their farm. South Africa has significant problems with farm murders, and being a South African farmer is one of the world's most dangerous jobs. The vast expanses of land make farmers easy and isolated targets for attacks. Many of the attacks have been senseless acts of torture and murder, with nothing stolen, leading to questions about the motivation behind these murders.
Chris, who takes care of the monument, says that the murders may be politically motivated to drive white farmers off their land. Many of the victims are elderly and have a harder time defending themselves and their farms. According to Chris, working on the security of one's family and farm has become a full-time job beyond just the agricultural work.
Meanwhile the South African Government is pushing for white farmers to lose their land and farms without compensation (Expropriation without compensation) to be given to someone within the black population. The rhetoric and pretext for expropriation without compensation from the ANC is that: why compensate someone who has stolen your land? Whites have been in South Africa since the 1600s, and many of the farms that will be affected have been family farms for many generations.
The only thing standing between the ANC fulfilling this political agenda is the farmers themselves, who have taken the issue to the courts to keep their land. If the farmers win, the ANC will need to change the constitution, something they can do if they want, and then the white farmers will have no legal protection.
This is reminiscent of Robert Mugabe's agricultural reforms in Zimbabwe, which led to the genocide of whites in Zimbabwe.
The EFF is the party that most incites against farmers, and the EFF is a coalition partner of the ANC. It was also the EFF that proposed taking white farmers' land without compensation, which ANC then voted in favor of. EFF's leader Julius Malema has made several macabre statements, such as it is time to cut the throat of whiteness, and at their political meetings, he sings about shooting white farmers.
Civil rights organization Afriforum, which tracks farm murders, has also noted an increase in farm attacks during Malema's hate-filled meetings.
The mainstream media and establishment do not take farm murders seriously and instead try to hide them within the general crime statistics, claiming that it is just one crime among others and that white farmers are not particularly vulnerable.
Chris hopes that this monument can help break the silence and no longer deny what is happening. The monument breaks through the silence, and the crosses stand as a silent testimony that this is actually happening in South Africa.
There are so many crosses here that they are almost impossible to count, and each cross represents a brutal murder.
During the first week of September each year, people gather here at the monument to ceremonially erect new crosses for those who have been murdered on their farms during the past year. It is usually the relatives of the deceased who put up the crosses.
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Jonas Nilsson on location in South Africa