According to the civil rights group, AfriForum, the teenager took the suspects by surprise when they tried to break into his parents’ house over the weekend, only to find him home. AfriForum’s Head of Community Safety, Ian Cameron, revealed on his Twitter page hours ago that an altercation between the young man and the suspects then ensued, which resulted in him receiving lashes from a sharp object on his arms. The suspects are still at large as they fled on foot following the incident. While police in the province confirmed the incident, they do not agree with Cameron that this was a farm attack.

Police spokesperson in the province, Aafje Botma insisted that the matter was not a farm attack but rather an assault. Furthermore, she said the assault incident did not happen in the yard as the suspects were unable to gain entry into the house. This suggests that there may be a difference in how the police and the civil rights group define farm attacks. Meanwhile, this led OFM News to send questions to Cameron on how Afriforum defines “farm attacks”, to which he answered while he believes that the police may not agree with the civil rights group on this specific case, the group and the police generally use the same definition.

 In a written response provided by Cameron, he said a 2017 debate in South Africa’s parliament, the attacks were described as “not normal criminality”, “crimes fuelled by hatred” and “extremely violent and often accompanied by brutal torturing in the most barbaric way”. He referred OFM News to an article published by Africa Check, wherein Head of the Communications for the South African Police Services, Sally de Beer, said while terms such as “farm attack” and “farm murders” are popularly used to refer to “certain crimes committed on farms and smallholdings”. The official definition , which was formally introduced in 1997/98 and contained in the police’s 2011 Rural Safety Strategy defines a farm attack as “acts of violence against persons on farms and smallholdings and refer to acts aimed at a person (persons) residing on, working on or visiting farms and small holdings, with the intent to murder, rape, rob or inflict bodily harm.” The definition also goes further to say that it also identifies farm attacks as “all acts of violence against infrastructure and property in the rural community aimed at disrupting legal farming activities as a commercial concern, whether the motive/s are related to ideology, land disputes, land issues, revenge, grievances racist concerns or intimidation are included”. By this definition, indirect attacks such as intimidation , arson and malicious damage to property are also included in this definition. However, in the Africa Check article hereby mentioned, De Beer says violence related to “domestic violence or liquor abuse, or resulting from commonplace social interaction between people” are not included under farm attacks. “There is no official crime category called ‘farm attack; or ‘farm murder’, though. The crimes mentioned in the definition – such as murder, rape and assault – are recorded by the police station investigating it. Police stations are then expected to report incidents meeting the definition listed to head office for inclusion on a separate, stand-alone database, De Beer explained in the article.

OFM News