The civil rights organisation AfriForum today announced that it would send victims whose loved ones had been murdered in farm attacks to the USA as part of the next phase of AfriForum’s awareness campaign against farm murders and expropriation without compensation. The organisation also plans on launching the book Kill the Boer* by Ernst Roets, Deputy CEO of AfriForum, in Washington, D.C. AfriForum will also send 100 copies of the book to international opinion formers and hand-deliver a copy of the book at the office of President Cyril Ramaphosa.

This follows after Ramaphosa said at a media conference yesterday in New York that there were no farm murders or land grabs in South Africa.

AfriForum wants to provide farm attack victims and their families with the opportunity to tell their stories to opinion formers, politicians, government representatives and the media in Washington.

Roets describes Ramaphosa’s statements as infamous lies and says that these are a slap in the face of the more than 10 000 people who were attacked on South African farms, as well as the families of the approximately 2 000 victims who were killed in these farm attacks.

“There is no way to beat around the bush or tone down what the President said. It is shamelessly false,” Roets says. He adds that it is just as deceptive to state that there are no land grabs in South Africa. “AfriForum has just this month obtained a court order on behalf of Dr Motodi Maserumule, a Gauteng farmer, to remove illegal landgrabbers from his farm after the South African Police Service (SAPS) had refused to open Maserumule’s case against the landgrabbers.”

Roets points out that according to the SAPS’s own figures an average of almost two farm attacks per day and two farm murders per week have occurred over the past two decades. “AfriForum has confirmed 320 farm attacks and 43 farm murders on South African farms since January this year only,” Roets says.

*The book Kill the Boer deals with the brutality of farm murders in South Africa and the complicity of the South African government in this crisis. The book contains more than 1 000 references, including many interviews with farm attack victims.