ONE hopes there are still people in this world who want to know the truth, dreadful as that truth may be. On that assumption, APN has dedicated this entire issue (and increased both its size and print run) to the ongoing, indiscriminate and unspeakably bloodthirsty slaughter of White South African farmers. We do this because, for all practical purposes, we in SA are back to the barbarous Border wars waged by the Ama-Xhosa against the White settlers in the Eastern Cape 200 years ago.

We believe it to be absolutely urgent to focus global attention on the ANC regime’s nonchalant, ho-hum attitude to the vicissitudes suffered by farmers, their families, labour and animals in what the farmers (and many others) believe to be a politically motivated campaign to run them off the land.

That suspicion is rekindled with each murder: and reinforced by Nelson Mandela’s now oft-repeated invitation to Whites to leave the country if they can no longer tolerate the criminal holocaust which his own incomparably incompetent regime has inflicted on us all by its manifest inability or unwillingness to maintain law and order.

Purpose of such carnage? Clearly, to create horror and fear among the remaining farming community: a classic communist tactic in any rural war targeted against farmers.

Whatever, it is a repulsive picture. Let’s look at the gory catalogue suffered by SA farmers, mostly White Afrikaners. From January 1 this year to August 31, 104 farmers have been slain in 590 farm attacks. Since May, 1994, when the ANC/SACP took power, there have been some 570 farm murders in 2 421 attacks. Compare that with 39 White farmers killed in Kenya’s Mau Mau uprising in the 1960s and under 300 killed in the 14 years of the Rhodesian war.

The farm attacks are of course not an isolated aberration. They are part and parcel of SA’s astounding crime rate: 40 murders, 73 attempted murders, 136 rapes, 35 hijackings, 176 robberies and 670 housebreakings recorded every day of the year.