Killing of White Farmer, Apartheid Comes up Again

The killing of White Farmer, Apartheid Comes up Again 

By- Ali Reinhardt 

Summary- Mr. Horner was a young, white farmer in Senekal, South Africa he was found tied to a pole on a farm, dead. Topics about apartheid and land were brought to attention once again. The suspects were apart of a ring of livestock stealing in the Eastern part of the Free State province. At the court where the case was being tested, there were 2 groups, white farmers fighting against the government for deliberately failing to protect them. The other group was part of the Economic Freedom Fighters. On a hill outside the town waved a banner of the face of the victim. Tension is very high in rural farming areas where white people own the vast majority of land and Blacks still serve as workers. White South Africans make up 9 % of the country’s 58 million citizens. At the hearing, white farmers and motorcycle riders faced off and stood nose to nose through the barbed wire. AfriForum, a large advocacy group for Afrikaners, the descendants of the white Dutch and Huguenot settlers of South Africa, has led international efforts to draw attention to their discredited claims that white farmers are being systematically forced off their land and killed in large numbers. White South Africans believe that they should be able to own farms in peace and grow their own crops. South Africans still believe that White South Africans have more power over them and wants it to stop. They get paid less and they get treated differently. Both sides are fighting for their rights but you can see that when the countries decided to colonize, they created tension with the two groups that are still here today. 

Analysis- I think this article gives a great amount of reasoning to show that the white-minority rule is still lingering in South Africa. The people of South Africa are scared and they don’t want there to be another time period where apartheid might still exist. In the text it says,”“What happened in Senekal shows just how easily the tinderbox of race hatred can be ignited,” The tension never stopped when apartheid was demolished. There is still tension and it comes from when the Dutch descended Afrikaners and the British colonized South Africa. I think that South Africans are scared because they don’t want anything like happened when apartheid was a thing. They completely took away their rights and it was unfair. They want to live their life freely and not under strict laws that don’t involve one race over another. But they can’t because there are still social injustices. If they work on White South African farms, they get paid less than the other workers.  A survey that was taken in 2017 said that white farmers controlled 70% of farms held by individual owners in South Africa. I think what the author is trying to do is say that even though it is 2020 and apartheid was banned in 1994 what the Afrikaners did will remain in South Africa for a long time. It is very clear the way that apartheid has still affected South Africans today and in the future. They still want to bring the attention that it needs. 

 Discussion Question(s)- Do you think that apartheid still exists today? How would the people of South Africa be affected if Apartheid came back today?