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DA MP Dianne Kohler Barnard.
Michael Hammond, Gallo Images
- DA MP Dianne Kohler-Barnard says criminals find it easy to target farmers and farm workers as they are cut off from major cities.
- Kohler-Barnard led a debate on the recent series of attacks on farms in the National Assembly.
- On Monday, Vice President David Mabuza condemned the violent attacks against farmers and people in rural farming communities.
The isolation of rural and agricultural communities gives criminals days and nights to torture families to death.
This according to DA MP Dianne Kohler-Barnard, who led a debate on attacks on farms in the National Assembly on Tuesday.
He said attacks on farms have reached dangerous levels as the men and women who fed South Africa did not sleep.
“They do night patrols around their farms, and I know of wives who watch their husbands with cameras as they patrol in the dark.
“Watching the attackers, waiting to see if tonight is the night her beloved husband will be killed. Unless they farm in Lekwa, Mpumalanga, where the electricity is cut off week after week so the farmers live in terrifying total darkness while the animals die of cold and everything rots in their refrigerators.
“They live the reality that it is four times more dangerous to be on a farm than anywhere else in South Africa.”
Kohler-Barnard added that farmers and farm workers felt they had become persona non grata.
“The Police Rural Safety Plan is pulled, reworked and relaunched regularly. Rinse, whitewash, repeat. Without equipment and manpower, rural stations don’t have the ability to remove those good-sounding words from the page.
“Today, countries around the world look at our farmers with a purchasing glint in their eyes: 2,000 of them went to farm in the United States in the last three months; our farmers have made Zambia one of the main food exporters of the continent – and where we are, “he said.
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This week, Vice President David Mabuza condemned the violent attacks against farmers and people in rural farming communities.
He stressed the importance of the agricultural sector to the country’s economy and called on all South Africans to value farmers and agricultural workers and to be relentless in their search for a better country.
Safer
ANC MP Zwelivelile Mandela said all stakeholders must come together to make communities safer.
“Rural farmers, farm workers and farming communities are especially vulnerable as they are isolated and far from essential services. We must consider strategies to end this scourge. It is an exercise we must collectively embrace or face the dire consequences.” , said. additional.
READ ALSO | MPs ‘appreciate’ police rural security response
EFF MP Constance Mkhonto said the debate on the farm attacks was conducted in a way that sought to project whites as victims and blacks as perpetrators.
“The district attorney will not put it so harshly, but this is their strategy … they ridiculed the Black Lives Matter movement and argued that we should focus on the attacks on farms. That tells you that the only lives that matter in their thinking it’s the lives of whites, “she added.
IFP MP Narend Singh said that not a week went by without reports of an attack on farmers.
“These black and white killings shook the nation and brought us the same debate. But where is the justice for these families? Have arrests been made? This debate seeks to address the recent scourge of farm killings, but this It is not a novelty. Crime. The time of the talks is over, “he added.
