Speaker grants DA request for Debate of National Importance on farm murders
24 July 2020
The Democratic Alliance (DA) welcomes the Speaker of the National Assembly, Thandi Modise, acceding to our request for a Debate of National Importance on the scourge of farm attacks and murders across the nation. A date for the debate will be determined soon.
It is critical that Parliament uses its platform to highlight the dangers of living and working in our rural communities.
There has been a significant upsurge in the number of reported incidents of farm attacks since the start of this seemingly endless lockdown. These attacks have been particularly heinous in nature, with brutal torture being commonplace.
Despite, or perhaps because of, the ANC’s denialist stance, specifically the breathtaking denial by President Cyril Ramaphosa himself who said in 2018 that no farmers were being murdered in South Africa, the country’s agricultural sector continues to be threatened by this volatile security situation.
On top of the losses caused by the ANC’s catastrophically long lockdown, our farmers must additionally carry enormous losses related to agricultural crime to the tune of R10 billion in 2019 and a predicted output loss to the South African economy of R20 billion for this year.
The ANC government has been content to simply turn a blind eye to the tortures, rapes and murders of men, women and children of all races in our rural areas since the ANC suddenly shut down the SANDF Commando Unit in 2003. The DA, on the other hand, is of the belief that these attacks are a national emergency and must be addressed as a matter of urgency.
One month ago we began an awareness campaign, to force this issue onto the front burner. Requesting this Debate of National Importance was just one of the 16 points in our plan to ensure the safety of farmers, farm workers and visitors to farms. During the past four weeks we have, amongst other actions:
Reported more than 20 hate-filled social media posts to the South African Human Rights Commission
Created a national Watching Brief team, covering all nine provinces, to assist those attacked through the Police and Court procedures
Sourced various institutions with a view to requesting a new study on Rural Security and the causes of the attacks and tortures of the farming community
Called for and been granted this debate of national importance in the National Assembly
Been working with various farmers and Agricultural Unions on security matters
Been driving for land ownership, and the financial support of emerging farmers
Been pulling together all the improvements needed to ramp up rural security from the side of the SAPS, including declaring farm attacks to be determined to be Priority Crimes and the introduction of specific Specialised Units
It is the DA’s hope that the collective experience of the Members of Parliament who partake in the Debate of National Importance, will inform Government’s sourcing of international best-practice methodology to keep our farmers and farmworkers, and their families, safe, while they toil to feed our nation.
Issued by Dianne Kohler Barnard, DA Shadow Minister of State Security, 24 July 2020
