Very few farm murders appear to be committed for political reasons. But the response to them is often political. Making up less than half a percent of all homicides reported each year, farm killings dominate the national narrative on violence. At the heart of the conflict is a long history of violence on agricultural land, and deep-rooted fears and prejudices about race, belonging, and who gets to feel safe in South Africa.
Around the early 2000s, a woman by the name of Adriana Stuijt began to pop up in South African news articles, mentioned in connection with various ‘internet freedom’ projects she was working on, including a website that was collecting and publishing statistics about farm murders in South Africa. Bloody Harvest also introduced South African audiences to another persona, a retired American law professor by the name of Gregory H Stanton, who had founded an organisation called Genocide Watch and who, the report said, believed South Africa was already at ‘Stage Five’ in what was then his self-defined eight stages of genocide .
During the late 1990s, as the centenary of the South African War approached, there were many editorials in newspapers likecalling for the British government to acknowledge its past actions and to apologise for the murders of so many Afrikaner women and children. In one such editorial in, the author/s, never really known for pretending to be anything other than what they were , made this comment: ‘Daar word deesdae baie gepraat van volksmoord. Dit word ook in verskillende verbande gebruik.
Some persons were forced out of denial that something very serious is wrong in SA. They now need to somehow explain the phenomenon and othering as well as blaming the victims and manufacturing excuses for the perpetrators are their favorite pastimes.