The civil rights organisation AfriForum hosted a conference today in Pretoria with the aim of creating more legal certainty for farmers regarding various challenges faced by rural dwellers in South Africa.

Farming in South Africa and living in rural environments is becoming a bigger challenge every day.

Unfortunately, farmers have to worry about much more than the current economic climate, weather conditions and producing food for millions of South Africans. Moreover, they are regularly confronted with different risks that threaten their safety and for which legal assistance must be obtained.

Some of the topics discussed by legal experts today include land grabs, trespassing, farm raids and emergencies, and self-defence.

“The aim of this conference was to give farmers and rural communities more certainty about what their rights are and how they should act if they were to deal with some of these challenges. Farmers must also know what steps they must follow to prevent problems such as land grabs and to solve it as soon as possible,” says Jacques Broodryk, AfriForum’s spokesperson for Community Safety.

The information that was shared today at the conference was also transformed into a series, Die boer en die reg, which will soon be available on AfriForumTV.