White farmers were targeted and murdered in South Africa

The Azanian People’s Liberation Army (APLA), the military wing of the Pan Africanist Congress (PAC), targeted and killed white farmers in the nineties.

This was revealed by Dr James Myburgh, a South African political analyst, historian, and media professional.

Myburgh provided details on the origins, history, and nature of farm attacks in South Africa in a discussion on The Common Sense podcast.

He cited data from the South African Police Service and farmer organisations, which have been tracking farm murders for decades.

“APLA, the armed wing of the PAC, had an explicit military policy of targeted killings against white farmers,” he said.

This was confirmed by transcripts from the Truth Commission, where former APLA operatives shared their stories.

During the early 1990s, the PAC proclaimed a military strategy of a protracted people’s war, which involved the infiltration of APLA guerrillas into South Africa.

This strategy involved rural guerrilla warfare, where the targets of such attacks were members of the security forces and white farmers.

These two groups, APLA said, were perceived to be the frontline of defence for the former apartheid government.

A repossession unit was set up where APLA cells conducted armed robberies to raise funds and obtain weapons and vehicles to carry out its military strategy.

It later extended beyond white farmers and security forces, and they started to attack restaurants, hotels and bars in urban areas

These were usually places frequented by white civilians, although the PAC claimed that the attacks were not racist in character.

It explained that it was directed against the apartheid government and that all whites were complicit in the policy of apartheid.

APLA’s former director of operations said they were proud of what they did and had no regrets about the attacks.

“It is unfortunate that people had to die, but it is not something that we are ashamed of that we went to war,” he said.

“War by its very nature is evil, and if there were another method of avoiding it, we would have avoided it.”

“So, we are not going to have difficulties owning up to robberies. I am not having difficulties owning up to attacks on farms.”

ANC campaign to clear white farmers off their land

It was not only the PAC and APLA who targeted white farmers. The ANC also had a violent campaign to clear white farmers off their land.

Myburgh explained that in the mid-1980s, there was a burst of violence against people living isolated on farms, driven by a campaign from the ANC.

“There was a major ANC campaign directed from exile to clear the white farmers off their land,” Myburgh said. This campaign took three forms.

• General incitement, with exhortations to people to rise up and seize the land.

• A landmine warfare campaign, which also involved an assassination component.

• Infiltrate guerrillas from their camps in Angola into South Africa to link up with the bands of youth to give them training and direction for attacks on targets in the white areas.

“This was how the first farm murders of this particular type were instigated in mid-1985,” Myburgh said.

“This was also how the ‘Kill the Boer’ chant was first injected into South Africa during the revolutionary ferment of that period.”

He added that it was part of ANC doctrine at the time that guerrillas could use robbery to secure weapons and operational funds in so-called repossession operations.

Myburgh said that the ANC government did not act to curtail this kind of predatory criminal violence by building up the state institutions necessary to combat it.

Instead, the government steadily decreased the capacity of the security services that were most suited to fight farm murders.

“Specialised police units, such as the murder and robbery units, were dismantled, and the rural commando system was abolished,” he said.

“Over time, armed attacks on people in or near their homes came to be regarded in South Africa as an unpleasant fact of life,” he said.

“This normalisation of farm and home attacks and the government’s dismantling of the state’s capacity to combat this crime has had terrible consequences.”

He said that reversing the demoralisation of South African society requires recognising the farm murder phenomenon for the horror that it is and was.

“No South African, wherever they live, should have to fear even their own houses, to fear both day and night alike,” he said.