"It is clear," wrote James Myburgh, editor of Politicsweb, "that farmers have been, and still are, uniquely vulnerable to armed and often murderous attacks."
Myburgh was responding to an article released last Friday by the South African Institute of Race Relations in which it claimed that farmers were no more vulnerable to attack than the general population.
As it turns out, Myburgh was right, which is surprising since the Institute of Race Relations has an enviable reputation for turning out impeccable research.
To be fair, however, the institute had based its original report on information supplied by the Transvaal Agricultural Union, which was found to have under-reported statistics on farm attacks by a measure of seven to one.
The institute has since put this right.
Be that as it may, the country's farming community is nearly 13 times more likely to suffer household robberies than the general population and is twice as likely to suffer aggravated robbery or robberies which extend to murder or attempted murder.
The institute says if the incidence of attacks on smallholdings is extracted, based on the view that these farmers are on large urban plots rather than farms, the aggravated robbery, murder and attempted murder ratio is the same as that for the general population.
It is now agreed that smallholdings should be included as part of the farming community and it's evident that rural areas are subjected to a proportionately greater numbers of attacks than urban residents.
The institute says this illustrates a high level of neglect of the farming community by the government.
Source: Business Day
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