Afrikaner small-scale farmer Jan* and his wife Marietjie* were the victims of a farm attack in which their dogs were poisoned and gunmen fired 67 shots into their home.
They survived, unlike fellow Afrikaners Dawid and Rallie de Villiers, in their 80s, who were murdered in their home in Eastern Cape with the perpetrators leaving satanic symbols painted in their blood, according to local media reports.
Or Lindley farmer Attie Potgieter, who was stabbed more than 150 times while his wife and two-year-old daughter were forced to watch before being murdered too.
But not all victims of farm murders are white — scores of black workers have also been caught up in the violence, and black farmers have not been spared, including David Netshilaphala, a 62-year-old small-scale farmer in Limpopo, who disappeared after checking his kraal. Police found his body several weeks later.
Nor are all attackers black people. In August 2022, a Ficksburg farmer, Morgan Barratt, was assaulted by Rudi Gericke and Kleinjan le Grange. In January 2023, Evan Sorour, 28, also a farmer in the Ficksburg area, was shot dead and his father, Reuter, assaulted by Gericke, who was sentenced to 13 years for murder.
Farm murders are in international headlines after 59 Afrikaners landed in the US under President Donald Trump’s programme to give refugee status to those “who are victims of unjust racial discrimination”.
An executive order signed by Trump said the US will promote the resettlement of Afrikaner “refugees” escaping “government-sponsored race-based discrimination, including racially discriminatory property confiscation”. It has since been expanded to include all minorities, including coloured and Indian South Africans.
But critics in South Africa and elsewhere have pointed out that farm violence also affects black people, and that violent crime is a national issue that has millions of people living in fear, regardless of race.
They have also questioned the vetting process the US embassy used to verify the claims made by those applying for refuge.
The Mail & Guardian asked the US embassy in Pretoria what criteria were used in considering applications from South Africans, particularly Afrikaners, for refugee or asylum status, and whether there specific programmes or mechanisms in place for evaluating claims.
The embassy referred questions to the state department. A spokesperson responded: “To be considered for the US Refugee Admissions Programme in South Africa, individuals must meet all of the following criteria: must be of South African nationality; must be of Afrikaner ethnicity or be a member of a racial minority in South Africa; must be able to articulate a past experience of persecution or fear of future persecution.”
According to the state department’s bureau of population, refugees and migration, refugees from African countries must meet the legal definition under the US Immigration and Nationality Act: “A person who is unable or unwilling to return to their country of origin due to a well-founded fear of persecution based on race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group and political opinion.”
US deputy secretary of state Christopher Landau welcomed the first group of Afrikaners to the US on 12 May, including Jan and Marietjie, who shared their experiences in an interview on retired US colonel Chris Wyatt’s YouTube channel. Wyatt, who has lived in Africa, has been outspoken about US-South Africa relations.
In the interview, the couple said they had left family to run their farm in South Africa and relocating to the US had brought them relief.
“Having gone through a farm attack ourselves, where three of my family members in the house were shot, the relief that we’ve experienced on this side is tremendous. We literally didn’t sleep at night for every single sound,” Jan said.
“In that house, they fired 67 shots that night, so if [Marietjie, after the incident] turned on her side, she could literally touch the bullet hole in the wall.
“The middle of the door, when we pushed the door closed, they were thinking that my dad was standing in front of the door, so they shot through the middle of the door at him.
“We got asked by a lot of people, why are we still there? It’s because that’s our heritage. But if it wasn’t for my children, I think we would have endured everything and remained.
“But as a parent, I need to ensure their safety, and they are definitely not safe in South Africa,” he said.
The family was temporarily staying in a four-bedroomed Airbnb house and had viewed one the US government had found for them.
“If I get the opportunity, I would like to do farming again. I told them I’m willing to sweep the streets if that is needed, just to settle in and get going. But we grew up on the farm. That’s our backbone — farming.”
“We planted everything by hand and harvested everything by hand. Our latest venture was 90 000 cabbages. Myself, my wife and two workers planted every plant by hand. We harvested by hand,” Jan added.
Wyatt, who is in touch with some of the relocated Afrikaners, including farmers and with children, told the M&G many are furious about how they have been portrayed in the media, being called “cowards” by President Cyril Ramaphosa and described as “car guards” by Economic Freedom Fighters leader Julius Malema, who also publicly demanded the names and farm addresses of the refugees.
“We did this to ensure our kids have a future — and a bright future,” Smit told Wyatt on the channel. “He can call us cowards. It doesn’t have any negative bearing on any of us. We know the truth. We know what we’ve experienced.”
Marietjie said she was sure others would follow them to the US when they saw that “we are happy and safe and how relaxed we are”.
Wyatt said the mood among the refugees he spoke to was one of “a great sense of relief and safety”.
“They’re not looking over the shoulder. They’re not up at night guarding, taking shifts sleeping. Some of these families, that’s what they had to do,” he told the M&G.
“A lot of them are very apoplectic about what’s going on. They expected to be attacked being the first to come over, but the violations of the Popi [Protection of Personal Information] Act, the effort to destroy their lives and harm them, has really shocked some of them.”
Wyatt said many of the refugees had hidden their identities from the media but there had been attempts to “dox” those who were photographed on arrival in the US.
One news site, he said, visited the house of a woman in Gqeberha and exposed her name.
Wyatt said he “always stopped short of saying there’s a genocide in South Africa”, as Trump has claimed, “because it’s a politically charged term” with a “very specific legal definition”.
However, he argued that he believed the country has reached stage eight — persecution — of the 10 stages identified by Genocide Watch.
He said Trump’s executive order was a response to racial discrimination in education and business, an apparent reference to the government’s black economic empowerment programme.
Critics, including the Democratic Alliance, have slammed the policy as racially divisive but the ANC, which introduced the programme after coming to power, says it is meant to redress the economic and social imbalances created by apartheid.
“Some of them may have had teenage kids who graduated matric with a 90% or 98% and were denied a bursary because of their skin colour. That’s a justification for coming here. Some of them may have been forced to sell equity in a company, or they didn’t get promoted because of their skin. But instead of admitting what’s going on, [critics] want to focus on ‘everyone’s a victim of crime’,” Wyatt said.
He added farm violence and incidents involving black farmworker victims was also underreported.
Afrikaner rights group AfriForum said there were 333 farm attacks and 50 murders in 2022, declining to 296 and 49 incidents, respectively, in 2023.
The police stopped publishing farm murder statistics in 2006-07, integrating them into general murder figures. In 2018-19, it reintroduced specific reporting, noting 47 farm murders. Since then, it has only intermittently included this data.
The latest police statistics, for October to December last year, indicated one murder of a farm owner among 12 farm murders out of 6 953 total reported killings. AfriForum disputed this, claiming eight farm owners were murdered during the period.
* Names were changed on the YouTube video for fear of reprisals.