Legal township establishment processes exist to ensure that urban development is safe, serviced and sustainable.
Recent global attention on South Africa, including the meeting between presidents Cyril Ramaphosa and Donald Trump at the White House, has reignited an old, emotionally charged debate: are white South Africans, and particularly white Afrikers, being persecuted?
This narrative has found fresh traction in Tshwane, where concerns have been raised about the taxation of the whites-only Kleinfontein housing estate. Some have attempted to portray the City of Tshwane’s efforts to regularise this illegal development as evidence of persecution. That portrayal is false and dangerously misleading.
Much was made of crime in South Africa during the Washington meeting, yet it went unmentioned that the homicide rate in the US capital (27 per 100,000 residents) is far higher than that of South Africa’s capital, Tshwane (18 per 100,000 residents, according to the SA Cities Network). Tshwane has a homicide rate comparable to US cities such as Chicago or Newark, and is safer than Atlanta, New Orleans and Washington DC.
Concerns about so-called targeted killings of white South Africans are also not supported by the data. According to AgriSA’s own reporting for 2023-24, farm murders accounted for just 0.2% of the country’s total homicides. In 1998, nearly 40 farm murders occurred per quarter; in the first quarter of 2025, that number was six. Of those six victims, five were black South Africans — two farm owners, two farm workers and one manager. The sixth, a farm dweller, was white.
If there is evidence of racialised patterns of murder in South Africa, as Anton Rupert aptly pointed out during the Trump meeting, we must acknowledge the severe violence facing Cape Town’s black and coloured communities. Cape Town remains the most racially divided city in South Africa, with a murder rate (68 per 100,000 residents) that is almost four times as high as Tshwane, the very racially integrated capital city. Clearly maintaining apartheid’s separation of races is not keeping everyone safe.
The Kleinfontein question
Nevertheless, Kleinfontein, a white’s only housing settlement in Tshwane exists. Allegations have surfaced that rates increases are being unfairly imposed on it as a form of racial targeting, but this is simply untrue.
Kleinfontein, like at least 17 other illegally established housing developments in Tshwane, including in Elandsfontein, Moloto City, Tweefontein, Leeufontein and Prestige, was developed outside of legal township establishment processes. These processes are not bureaucratic red tape. They exist to ensure that developments are safe, serviced and sustainable.
The reality is that the land on which Kleinfontein sits is zoned for agricultural use. Agricultural zoning permits only one dwelling per farm (with a second by application), but Kleinfontein has about 650 dwellings. Agricultural properties are taxed at much lower rates than residential estates, yet the residents of Kleinfontein have been receiving municipal services on a scale inconsistent with their land’s zoning and paying far less for them than legal residents in surrounding suburbs. This is not a case of persecution, but of an imbalance that needs to be corrected for the sake of fairness to all Tshwane’s ratepayers.
This is about much more than service tariffs. Township establishment laws are designed to prevent chaotic urban sprawl and ensure that city infrastructure keeps pace with development. When an estate is established legally, the developers contribute to the cost of expanding roads, water, sewage and electricity services — costs that are then passed on to property purchasers. When a development happens illegally, these costs may be unfairly circumvented at the expense of all other ratepayers.
Legal township establishment processes also protect residents themselves, ensuring homes are not built on unstable land or in environmentally vulnerable areas. In some illegal estates, there has been no formal subdivision of the land. This means that residents may not legally own the land that they live on, exposing them to potential legal jeopardy.
From a broader sustainability perspective, allowing illegal developments to flourish risks destroying prime agricultural land and biodiversity hotspots, weakening both food security and ecological resilience.
The ideal of equality, enshrined in our Constitution, is not achieved by bending laws to shield one group or another. Rather, it is through the consistent, fair application of those laws that we build an inclusive future.
In South Africa’s democratic era, every citizen is welcome in our cities. Persecution is not when the law applies equally. Persecution is when it does not. We owe it to each other to ensure our cities grow legally, sustainably, and fairly. Developers and residents alike must respect the laws governing land use and urban development, not only because it’s right, but because it’s just.
Sarah Mabotsa is a Good party City of Tshwane councillor and MMC for economic development and spatial planning.