The civil rights organisation AfriForum has welcomed the fact that the ANC today condemned farm murders in a media statement, but added that statements alone are not enough to crack down on the crisis in practice. The organisation once again made a plea to the government to prioritise farm murders by drawing up a focused counter strategy and executing it.
Ernst Roets, Deputy CEO of AfriForum, however rejected the attack that the ANC launched on AfriForum in the same statement as being uninformed criticism. “The ANC claims that AfriForum is blind for the situation of farm workers, while AfriForum has already repeatedly expressed its dismay about it, while I even dedicated a chapter in my book Kill the Boer to the relationship between farmers and farm workers.”
Roets added that reliable data regarding evictions of farm workers was sparse and made a plea to the ANC to publish the data upon which its concern about the abuse of workers is based, so that it can be handled with the necessary earnestness. “The information available however makes it clear that the abuse of farm workers is limited to isolated cases, while farm attacks and farm murders are clearly based on a national trend. Both need to be condemned, but to pretend that the extent of the two crises is the same is irresponsible.”