White South African farmers and rival black protesters yesterday demonstrated in the central town of Senekal over a murder case that has reignited racial tensions still simmering 26 years after the end of apartheid.
The killing of Brendan Horner, a white man whose body was found tied to a pole at his farm in Free State Province, sparked riots at the start of this month, which prompted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to make a statement urging South Africans to “resist attempts... to mobilize communities along racial lines.”
The farmers, who accuse the government of failing to protect them from violent crime, started arriving in pickup trucks ahead of a court hearing in Senekal for Horner’s two suspected killers. The farmers mostly wore khaki shirts and shorts, and a few wore military outfits.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“We are getting tired now of all the farm murders,” said Geoffrey Marais, 30, a livestock trader from Delmas, where a woman was strangled to death two weeks ago.
“Enough is enough. [The government] must start to prioritize these crimes,” he said.
The radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), who represent poor black South Africans who feel left out of the country’s post-apartheid prosperity, staged a counter-march attended by thousands of protesters.
They work the group’s trademark red shirts and berets in the town center.
Police separated the two groups with razor wire in one street, but they regrouped and faced off in another area as police helicopters hovered overhead.
Despite the tensions, there were no reports of violence.
The EFF blames South Africa’s problems on what it says is a continued stranglehold of the economy by whites.
Several buses full of EFF supporters drove past the farmers singing “kill the boer [farmer]” out of the window as they headed into town.
“We are not scared of them. We are going to get them on Friday. We are going to face white men face to face,” the EFF’s firebrand leader Julius Malema was quoted as saying in the local press this week.
“I’m here because of white people... taking advantage of us,” said EFF supporter Khaya Langile, who came from the Johannesburg township of Soweto.
Tensions have been heightened by a government plan to expropriate white-owned land without compensation as part of an effort to redress economic inequalities that remain stark a quarter of a century after the end of apartheid.
About 70 percent of privately owned farmland in South Africa is owned by whites, who make up less than 9 percent of the country’s population of 58 million.
A string of rape and assault allegations against the son of Norway’s future queen have plunged the royal family into its “biggest scandal” ever, wrapping up an annus horribilis for the monarchy. The legal troubles surrounding Marius Borg Hoiby, the 27-year-old son born of a relationship before Norwegian Crown Princess Mette-Marit’s marriage to Norwegian Crown Prince Haakon, have dominated the Scandinavian country’s headlines since August. The tall strapping blond with a “bad boy” look — often photographed in tuxedos, slicked back hair, earrings and tattoos — was arrested in Oslo on Aug. 4 suspected of assaulting his girlfriend the previous night. A photograph
‘GOOD POLITICS’: He is a ‘pragmatic radical’ and has moderated his rhetoric since the height of his radicalism in 2014, a lecturer in contemporary Islam said Abu Mohammed al-Jolani is the leader of the Islamist alliance that spearheaded an offensive that rebels say brought down Syrian President Bashar al-Assad and ended five decades of Baath Party rule in Syria. Al-Jolani heads Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS), which is rooted in Syria’s branch of al-Qaeda. He is a former extremist who adopted a more moderate posture in order to achieve his goals. Yesterday, as the rebels entered Damascus, he ordered all military forces in the capital not to approach public institutions. Last week, he said the objective of his offensive, which saw city after city fall from government control, was to
The US deployed a reconnaissance aircraft while Japan and the Philippines sent navy ships in a joint patrol in the disputed South China Sea yesterday, two days after the allied forces condemned actions by China Coast Guard vessels against Philippine patrol ships. The US Indo-Pacific Command said the joint patrol was conducted in the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone by allies and partners to “uphold the right to freedom of navigation and overflight “ and “other lawful uses of the sea and international airspace.” Those phrases are used by the US, Japan and the Philippines to oppose China’s increasingly aggressive actions in the
‘KAMPAI’: It is said that people in Japan began brewing rice about 2,000 years ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol Traditional Japanese knowledge and skills used in the production of sake and shochu distilled spirits were approved on Wednesday for addition to UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage list, a committee of the UN cultural body said It is believed people in the archipelago began brewing rice in a simple way about two millennia ago, with a third-century Chinese chronicle describing the Japanese as fond of alcohol. By about 1000 AD, the imperial palace had a department to supervise the manufacturing of sake and its use in rituals, the Japan Sake and Shochu Makers Association said. The multi-staged brewing techniques still used today are
RSS