There's been a murder a week on farms in South Africa this year. Now
a race-baiting Marxist who loves singing Kill the Boer is set to become
Vice President
By Sue Reid
Daily Mail
Sep 29, 2023
Julius Sello Malema during the Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF) 10th Anniversary at FNB Stadium in Johannesburg on July 29
They came at breakfast time to murder Theo
Bekker, smashing an iron bar stolen from his own farmyard into his
skull before slitting his throat so he bled to death.
His
four teenage attackers then tied up his wife, Marlinda, and put a
plastic bag over her head before she slipped into unconsciousness.
Mercifully, she survived.
In South Africa,
where the murder rate is soaring, the killing of 79-year-old Mr Bekker
on July 30 still had the capacity to horrify. This week at the Afrikaans
Dutch
Reformed church half a mile from the Bekkers' cream-coloured farmhouse,
Minister Johan Bouwer told the Mail: 'The couple came here to Sunday
services. Marlinda was a regular every week; Theo would attend if he was
not busy on the farm.
'At a memorial
service for him, the church was packed, with white Afrikaans farming
families and black people from the area who paid their last respects to
him.'
Bouwer's wife, Rietha, added: 'We
have been terrified by Theo's murder. Sometimes we Afrikaners feel like
running from South Africa. But it is the only country we know, where we
were born.'
The farm of Theo and Marlinda Bekker near the town of Grootvlei some 100km south of Johannesburg, South Africa
Marlinda and Theo Bekker: Theo was bludgeoned to death while Marlinda miraculously survived the attack
Twenty-four hours before Mr Bekker's
killing, the nation's most controversial politician, Julius Malema, had
chanted an anthem entitled 'Kill the Boer' — a term for white farmers —
at a rally of 90,000 followers.
High above the dancing crowd in Johannesburg's black township of Soweto, Malema was raised on an electric platform like a king.
Sporting
his signature red beret, the self-proclaimed 'freedom fighter' mimicked
the sound of a sub-machine gun — 'Pah, pah, brrr!' — as he shouted out
his race-baiting song calling for the death of his white countrymen.
This
ugly rally marked the 10th anniversary of the founding of Malema's
party, Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF). It declares itself
Marxist-Leninist, wants to seize private property without compensation —
particularly farms such as Theo Bekker's — just as Malema's hero,
Robert Mugabe, did in neighbouring Zimbabwe.
It demands the nationalisation of the
banks and gold mines, and promises to enforce state control along the
lines of communist Cuba. Terrifyingly, it could get its way. The EFF is
the fastest-growing party in South Africa and Malema, who was raised by a
single mother in a black township, the nation's most forceful political
leader.
After next year's elections,
he could become Vice President. In vast swathes of the country — twice
the size of France and with a population approaching 60 million —
support for Malema, particularly among young blacks, is soaring.
It
outstrips that for the ruling African National Congress (ANC), where
Malema cut his political teeth as Youth League Leader before forming his
breakaway party.
Life of luxury: Malema and his designer-clad wife, Mantwa
Young men are among those waiting
for food to be handed out at the Afternoon Angels soup kitchen in
Gugulethu township, Cape Town.Many of the young men and women waiting in
line have university degrees
One of the ladies at the Afternoon Angels Soup kitchen prepares large pots of stew and rice in the township of Gugulethu
The Democratic Alliance (DA), a leading
opposition party popular among the middle class, has robustly condemned
Malema's anthem. Agriculture spokesperson Noko Masipa said last week:
'The Theo Bekker murder, coupled with Julius Malema's incitement to
'Kill the Boer', has raised serious red flags. We must not turn a blind
eye to the dangerous rhetoric aimed at one particular group [whites] of
our society.'
The hideous 'Kill the
Boer' rant has also been denounced by the world's richest man, South
African-born Elon Musk, who claimed Malema is orchestrating 'white
genocide' and should be stopped from singing it.
South
Africa's ANC President, Cyril Ramaphosa, has remained silent, while the
country's human rights court has ruled that any rendition of 'Kill the
Boer' is not a hate crime.
No matter
that the killings of white farmers have reached epic proportions. In the
past 20 years there has been a farm attack every two days and a murder
every five days, with whites of Afrikaans or English descent mainly
targeted.
According to figures given to
the Mail, there have been 42 murders on farms this year — more than one
a week. Some of these atrocities were praised on social-media sites
popular with young blacks.
Dr Theo De
Jager, who runs a farmers' rights organisation, says the small town of
Grootvlei, an hour's drive from Johannesburg, where the Bekkers raised
cattle, is a hotspot for crimes committed by jobless black South
Africans facing poverty and hunger.
Chillingly,
the country is increasingly riven by race, 29 years after the detested
apartheid system ended. Apartheid segregated black and white people by
law, forcing them to live separately. The cruel, racist government
suppressed the job and education prospects of those with darker skins.
Negotiations
with the ruling white minority Nationalist Party to introduce a
non-racial democracy were led by Nelson Mandela, who had spent 27 years
in jail before his release in 1990.
In
1994, he became the first elected president of the African National
Congress (ANC) when it formed a new government in the 'rainbow nation'.
Former High School principal
Tidwell Baba, 75, says that under the present government, children
leaving school have no hope of finding work even with a University
Degree or Diploma
South Africa.Community Leader
Jane Koko Mzongwana says cost of living and constant raising of council
taxes is making life very difficult for South African across the
spectrum
Jacques Broodryk says that farm
attacks and farm murders are not helped when politicians like Julius
Male sing the song 'Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer'
Under Mandela, the country's annual GDP
growth initially reached an impressive six per cent. However, the ANC
soon imposed a ruthless black empowerment programme that put paid to
that.
White state workers — from energy
experts and nurses to transport planners — were ordered to re-apply for
their jobs. Few got them back again.
Andrew
Kenny, a respected South African commentator, said recently: 'The ANC
has been a disaster, especially for ordinary black people whom it has
impoverished while making a tiny ANC elite fabulously rich.
'After
apartheid, our electricity provided the world's cheapest energy;
freight trains carried our ore (from the mines) to the ports; there was a
good passenger network for workers. The ANC wrecked it with looting,
corruption and a plethora of racist policies.'
The
result has been economic collapse and mass exodus. A fifth of whites —
both Afrikaans and English speakers — have left since the ANC came to
power.
Emigration among the entrepreneurial Indian-descended community is high, too.
Meanwhile,
the middle class have abandoned the ANC-controlled cities of
Johannesburg and Pretoria in the north — now plagued by no-go areas,
ransacked shops, gang warfare and other crime fuelled by unemployment.
They have settled in the Western Cape, the only part of South Africa that is run by the moderate Democratic Alliance.
The
speed of the country's descent has been devastating. Today, only 12 per
cent of South Africans of working age pay income tax, while a third
survive on £15-a-month state handouts.
World Bank analysts say a staggering 42 per cent of the adult population — the majority black — is unemployed.
Julius Malema cuts a cake alongside his glamorous wife Mantwa
'Afternoon Angels' feed hundreds
of people everyday as the cost of living means many people survive by
walking from soup kitchen to soup kitchen in search of a meal
Busisiwe Toni, 21, and her
boyfriend collect their meals from the soup kitchen. She says she will
be voting for the EFF and hopes that if they come to power, her dream of
becoming a lawyer might happen.
Among
16- to 24-year-olds, the hardest hit by this economic ruin, six in ten
are jobless. South Africa needs a growth rate of six per cent to provide
enough work for these increasingly angry young people. Yet the
International Monetary Fund predicts it will be just 0.3 per cent this
year — far below that of Rwanda and Nigeria.
The United Nations recently warned that the young jobless tally posed 'a ticking time bomb'.
Amid
the deprivation and poverty, it is the so-called 'Born Free' generation
— those too young to remember the horrors of apartheid — who are
turning to Julius Malema's fanatical EFF, promising him their vote at
next May's critical national elections.
I
found plenty of his supporters at Afternoon Angels, a food bank in the
black township of Gugulethu, seven miles from central Cape Town. It
houses tens of thousands of impoverished people in row upon row of metal
huts which line the potholed roads.
In
a 100-strong queue waiting for a liver and rice meal was Busisiwe
Tonisi, 21, with four of her female friends. She passed her high school
matriculation with a high maths mark, but has never worked. 'I dream of
being a lawyer but I haven't the money to study. I am desperate. I will
vote EFF because the ANC hasn't helped us black South Africans. Most of
us here back Julius Malema.'
Also
waiting was Aphelele Mapupu, 19, a talented portrait artist who has
perfect English in a country that has 12 official languages. He dropped
out of school in his mid-teens and now lives in a ramshackle shed near
the food bank with four of his brothers and their extended family.
When he takes me there, the backyard is littered with empty lager cans alongside a cannabis plant growing in the sunshine.
As
we chat about the fortunes of his beloved Chelsea FC, he says: 'I have
tried for work, but the bosses make excuses because I left before exams.
I will vote EFF. It is the politics of desperation. We are hungry every
day.'
So, what will firebrand Julius Malema offer Aphelele and other 'Born Free' South Africans?
The
EFF leader says he plans to transform the country into a new Cuba,
which he describes — astonishingly — as a successful socialist state.
A
rather different view of the Communist-run Caribbean island came
recently from Dr Christopher Sabatini, senior fellow for Latin America
at London think tank Chatham House, who described Cuba as an 'economic
basket case'.
In an interview on South
Africa's Biz News, Dr Sabatini warned that 100,000 Cubans have fled
their homeland this year because of poverty or malnutrition. The average
wage of state workers is £17 a month — enough to buy one Gouda cheese.
And hospitals are so short of money that patients have to bring their
own bed sheets.
All this, of course, is
likely to pass Malema by. As an MP, he boasted of his power earlier
this year in a bizarre rant at the national parliament, where EFF has 10
per cent of the seats. 'I've got you by the scrotum,' he boasted. 'I am
in charge. There is nothing you can do . . . even all of you combined.
You can scream anyhow you want — black opposition, white opposition. I
want that to sink in.'
And this may be
the unpalatable truth. National polling for next year's elections
predict the ruling ANC will make a weak showing as South Africans lose
hope in the party. It is expected to survive in government only by
forging a coalition with Malema's EFF, despite its pledge to destroy
South African capitalism.
Malema, a
millionaire many times over, makes his chanting supporters — who call
themselves comrades — wear red overalls to show solidarity with the
'oppressed' working classes.
He sent
his son to an expensive private school, in a country where
state-educated black children have the world's lowest literacy rate. He
lives with his designer-clad wife in one of the few safe parts of
Johannesburg, a leafy suburb called Sandton.
And
while he swears by public transport, he travels in Range Rovers and
Mercedes and wears a Breitling watch that's worth a small fortune.
A
South African journalist who obtained a list of Malema's credit card
purchases revealed it included finery from Gucci, Louis Vuitton, Lacoste
and Emporio Armani. Last week Malema sidestepped the Mail's request for
an interview. He was busy — appearing in a magistrates court, where he
faced charges of firing shots from a rifle on stage at a 2018 rally.
A
video produced in court by prosecutors showed the weapon in his hands
at the event. His lawyers insisted the video may have been faked.
As a result, Malema pleaded not guilty and the magistrate delayed a decision on the case until next month.
His fate is of little interest to one group of South Africans, the 'poor whites' who feel the brunt of the new racial divide.
Near
Johannesburg, in the former gold-mining town of Krugersdorp, some 200
families live in a shanty camp next to a steaming rubbish tip and a slag
heap left from the pit days.
In the
depths of squalor, these forgotten people — predominantly Afrikaans —
were once privileged on account of their skin colour. One of them,
Driekie Wiese, 54, was a nurse at the local hospital, like her mother
had been before her.
She had a good
life and a brick house before the end of apartheid. 'I loved my job. I
earned an income and was respected. Then came 1994,' she lisps through
missing teeth.
Her nursing post was
filled by a black South African and Driekie now makes money selling
metal tins from the nearby tip and cleaning houses for £2 a day.
Her
neighbour, schoolboy Morne Mulder, 16, fears for his prospects as a
white Afrikaner. 'My dad worked in the mines. But it is closed now,' he
says. 'Only a few people in this camp earn money by fixing cars,
cleaning or panel beating . . . anything for a few rand to eat.
'I am not ashamed to tell you that we live in utter poverty.'
Meanwhile,
Theo Bekker's farm remains locked up. After recovering in hospital from
her ordeal, his widow, Marlinda, has moved to live with her son in the
north of the country. It is unlikely she will ever return to the church
and community she loved.
As her husband
was bludgeoned to death, she recognised two of the four attackers as
local black farm workers. After murdering her husband, and nearly
killing her, they stole three firearms from the safe and escaped in
Marlinda's Peugeot car.
They rolled it
off the road two hours later, and the police found them as they tried to
escape. The group, aged 16 to 19, will face assault, murder and gun
theft charges in court later this year.
A
few days after the Bekker atrocity, another farming couple were
assaulted, 50 miles from the coastal city of Durban in the early
morning.
Their attackers chanted the words from Malema's song after breaking into Tim and Amanda Platt's home.
Amanda says: 'One of them shouted, 'Kill the Boer' as he hit me. They were ruthless, but we fought back. Then they fled.'
Amanda
was attacked with a bolt cutter, pieces of lead piping, and stabbed
with a spear, says Jacques Broodyk, security head of the Afrikaans'
civil rights organisation, AfriForum, which has mobilised 11,000
neighbourhood-watch volunteers to protect farms.
Mr
Broodyk calls Malema a 'radical maniac' who sings 'Kill the Boer'
deliberately to stir up racial hatred among his young supporters.
He
— like many other South Africans — fears for his country if the
extremist politician is voted to power next year, as looks increasingly
likely.
Background:
The wooded area where former police chief William Spivey was found
after faking his death. Inset: Spivey being hauled away by police in handcuffs after his arrest in
February 2022 
