South African political analyst and historian Dr James Myburgh has claimed that the first farm murders of their kind were started by an ANC campaign in the mid-1980s.
Myburgh made the claims in a speech about farm murders at the National Press Club in Washington, D.C., according to Newsday. He said he used data from the South African Police Service and farmer organisations, which have tracked farm murders for decades.
“This was how the first farm murders of this particular type were instigated in mid-1985,” Myburgh said.
He said the ANC ran a campaign from exile to push white farmers off their land. According to Myburgh, the campaign took three forms.
“This was also how the ‘Kill the Boer’ chant was first injected into South Africa during the revolutionary ferment of that period,” he said.
Myburgh said ANC doctrine at the time allowed guerrillas to use robbery to get weapons and money. These were called repossession operations, he said.
He said farm attacks stopped for a while but came back in 1990. He again linked this to ANC activity.
President F.W. de Klerk unbanned the ANC in February 1990. “The ANC underground, however, continued with illegal work, and it set about rebuilding the paramilitary units that had been shattered through state repression,” Myburgh said.
Myburgh said the South African Agricultural Union counted 66 murders from 327 attacks in 1991. He said the numbers kept rising through the 1990s and reached 150 murders a year in 1997. That level stayed for several years, he said.
He said the ANC kept arming and training its paramilitary units in secret during the negotiations before the 1994 elections. “These units were encouraged to use their own initiative to secure both weapons and funds for operations,” he said.
Myburgh said most political violence dropped after the April 1994 elections, but attacks on farmers did not. “Farm murders continued to increase from 84 in 1993, when you had these paramilitary units operating openly, to 92 in 1994 and 121 in 1995,” he said.
He said that by 1996, people living on farms and smallholdings were 20 times more likely to be killed in attacks at or near their homes than other South Africans. He said 500 people had been killed in farm attacks under ANC rule by mid-1998.
According to Myburgh, the ANC government rejected suggestions that farm attacks were anything other than ordinary crime. He said the government also cut the capacity of the security services best suited to fight farm murders.
“Specialised police units, such as the murder and robbery units, were dismantled, and the rural commando system was abolished,” he said.
Myburgh said armed attacks on people at home slowly came to be seen as a normal part of life in South Africa. He said this, along with the loss of state capacity, has had terrible results.
“No South African, wherever they live, should have to fear even their own houses, to fear both day and night alike,” he said.
Source: this article is based on reporting by newsday.co.za. Image: newsday.co.za. Written with the help of AI and published by the Tzaneen Voice News desk. See our Editorial Standards.
Kgomotso Maake covers news and politics for Tzaneen Voice. Kgomotso reports on government, Parliament, municipalities, courts, crime and service delivery across South Africa, with a close eye on how national decisions reach towns like Tzaneen and the wider Limpopo province. Stories are written in plain English and focus on the facts: who made the decision, what it means, and what happens next.