SIZWE SAMAYENDE, Pretoria | Thursday
SOUTH Africa’s security forces and justice system prioritise crimes against farmers but ignore those against farm labourers, Human Rights Watch reported on Wednesday.
The international organisation investigated the country’s volatile farming community last year and released a scathing 230-page report on Wednesday entitled “Unequal Protection: The State Response to Violent Crime on South African Farms.”
“Attacks against farm owners have gotten most of the attention, but attacks against other farm residents are a much bigger problem,” said Human Rights Watch deputy director of the Africa Division, Bronwen Manby, who was also the main author of he report.
“Farm workers and other rural dwellers are more vulnerable to violence, including from their employers, but are less likely to get help from the police or the courts,” she added.
Women subjected to sexual violence were even less likely to find justice.
“Farm workers and other rural dwellers are more vulnerable to violence, including from their employers, but are less likely to get help from the police or the courts.” She recommended that the government use only the police to address crime, instead of the army.
The report highlights abuse and torture allegedly carried out by South African National Defence Force (SANDF) reservists, private security companies and the police.
Most of the incidents occurred in Wakkerstroom in Mpumalanga and Ixopo in KwaZulu-Natal.
Manby said the state bodies and white farmers were accused of murder, rape, and beating farm workers for mistakes at work or impertinence.
The report recommends that private security initiatives be effectively controlled and that police and army management ensure that rogue members are properly disciplined and prosecuted.
Manby said the Rural Protection Plan needed to be overhauled to protect everybody in the farming community.
“Unless it becomes a broader response to the security concerns of all those living in commercial farming areas, it will continue to fail even those white farmers who caused it to be created,” she said.
The report can be found online at www.hrw.org/reports/2001/safrica2/ – African Eye News Service