Listen here.In this interview with Chris Steyn, Jacques Broodryk, the Chief Spokesperson for Community Safety at AfriForum, hails the announcement by the Trump administration of visa restrictions for those “responsible for, or complicit in, the enactment or implementation of laws or policies that enable uncompensated land seizures, race-based discrimination, and/or the incitement of imminent violence against members of minority ethnic or racial groups in South Africa.” In his reaction, Broodryk says: “We've been asking for direct sanctions against these political leaders for quite some time now, publicly and as well as in discussions with the US…we hope that the work that we've been doing has had some kind of an impact on the steps that the US has now taken. Because this is what we've been asking for, for international pressure so that the South African government can stop dismissing minorities' complaints and concerns the way that they have been doing for the last 30 years.” Broodryk also unpacks a new AfriForum report – focused on 47 separate violent farm attacks - that reveals a recurring pattern of torture. He says AfriForum will now continue to expand and strengthen its 178 neighbourhood and farm watches and invest in volunteer training as well as the expansion of its specialised response capabilities, technology, and communication networks..Sign up for your early morning brew of the BizNews Insider to keep you up to speed with the content that matters. The newsletter will land in your inbox every morning on weekdays. Register here.Support South Africa's bastion of independent journalism, offering balanced insights on investments, business, and the political economy, by joining BizNews Premium. Register here.If you prefer WhatsApp for updates, sign up to the BizNews channel here..Edited transcript of the interview.Chris Steyn (00:01.184)United States visa restrictions for South African officials associated with racial discrimination and incitement to racial violence, and an explosive report on the torture tactics used by farm killers. Both out on the same day. With me is Jacques Broodryk, the chief spokesperson for community safety at AfriForum. Welcome, Jacques.Jacques (00:26.343)Thank you very much, Chris. Good to speak to you and good day to your viewers.Chris Steyn (00:30.242)You're welcome, Jacques. Let us go to that statement from the United States. Please read the relevant paragraph, the most relevant paragraph for our viewers.Jacques (00:41.703)Well, yeah, this is quite a bombshell, but I'm guessing you're talking about this paragraph and I'll get to it. “The South African government has not adequately addressed the previously laid out concerns and so today I am announcing a new visa restriction policy under section 212A3C of the Immigration and Nationality Act targeting foreign nationals who are responsible for or complicit in the enactment or implementation of laws or policies that enable uncompensated land seizures, race-based discrimination and or the incitement of imminent violence against members of minority ethnic or racial groups in South Africa.” It all carries on. Do you like me to continue?Chris Steyn (01:21.922)No, that's fine, Jacques, your reaction.Jacques (01:25.319)Well, we as AfriForum, we obviously welcome this. We've been asking for direct sanctions against these political leaders for quite some time now, publicly and as well as in discussions with the US. So we're very grateful that it's taken this turn and that we're not seeing the country being punished by things like refusing us admission to AGOA, for instance, because it's not the citizens of the country's fault that we are in the situation that we're in and that governments are taking the decisions that are taking. It's purely the government's fault. And that's why we need these politicians and decision makers to be the ones who bear the brunt of any US action.Chris Steyn (02:01.677)So the implications. Does this mean that President Cyril Ramaphosa won't be able to visit his special friend Ambassador Roelf Mayer in Washington?Jacques (02:11.538)Well, that we're going to have to see. At this stage, it's still early news. This just came out late last night. So I'm not aware that there has been a list published anyway of the specific individuals yet. That might take some time. But yeah, it could have those consequences. And I also think it could have quite a large impact on personal business doings, which we know that many of these politicians are involved with. And I wouldn't be surprised if that was rather the angle that was taken here. But we'll have to wait and see how it plays out before we can affirm that.Chris Steyn (02:43.351)Jacques, let us go to the latest report from AfriForum on the nature of torture used in farm killings. You studied 47 attacks over a period of seven years. What sets farm killings apart from other killings in similar circumstances, house robberies in urban areas, for instance?Jacques (03:10.706)So what we did was we looked at 47 incidents over the last five years, which we identified as qualifying as they can be qualified as torture. Some of the key findings in this report - and what was very interesting is if you look at the methods, you see recurring patterns and tactics. So something like boiling water being used to torture people while they are tied up is a very common thing…Jacques (03:40.633)People being severely assaulted in front of their families, and girls being raped in front of their fathers. That type of thing, that psychological impact is quite severe and what doesn't make sense if you look at the report is in the cases where things are eventually stolen, it just doesn't add up that this extreme level of violence was required in order to steal a vehicle, a firearm, a couple of thousand rand in cash. It just doesn't make sense. And then there are cases where people complied and they did transfer the money to the robber, the attackers accounts, and then they were killed brutally. Their throats were slit. So why do you kill people after the fact? So these are all indications that in many instances in farm attacks, I do not think that it's disputable that there's darker motivations than simply being an ordinary crime.Chris Steyn (04:37.505)Jacques in how many cases were torture used after the aims had been achieved to get firearms and money?Jacques (04:49.688)That's very difficult to say because often in murder cases you're not sure when exactly what was taken and what took place. That's a difficult thing to establish. But I definitely do know of instances where people complied and the torture and things carried on. There's one farmer, I think he was 74 years old, he was tortured for 12 hours. 12 hours? What can a 74- -year-old man be hiding from you for 12 hours that is so precious that you won't give it up. And unfortunately, he spent a month in intensive care and he didn't make it. So that's something that we see happen in these cases, which again, I say is pretty clear evidence that we can't afford incitement of these types of crimes if there's already an undertone of politically or racially motivated, some form of hatred, involved in these crimes. Then we need a government who comes out and says we condemn chants like ‘Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer’. We are going to give farmer attacks the necessary attention that it deserves, that is given to other unique crimes such as cash-in-transit robberies and illicit mining and wildlife trafficking. We do not need a government who denies the problem, plays it down and when they talk about it like a former previous Police Minister he blames the farmers for being victims. So we really need honest discussions about it and the government needs to come to the table.Chris Steyn (06:10.497)Looking at these 47 attacks, in how many cases were the perpetrators known to the victims?Jacques (06:19.879)Very few. I think in those cases there was one where one of the farmers' wives said she recognised some of the attackers as either working on one of the neighbour's farms or having worked for them for a season or something like that. So that's only one incident that I'm aware of in this report.Chris Steyn (06:36.269)Yeah, because some people say that often- or believe that - some of these attacks are carried out in revenge for having been treated badly.Jacques (06:47.133)There have been attacks in incidents that have occurred due to loan disputes and things of that nature. I also don't say that there aren't any farm workers that aren't treated badly, you know, I'm sure there are. But this isn't the prevailing evidence that we see when we look into these matters. The crimes are definitely very well planned and organised, which is another reason why we feel it should receive priority crime attention. It's organised crime. There has been evidence that some of these attackers will scout out the family and the farm for days before they carry out the attack with military precision. So that tells us that they are all aware of what's going on, it's well planned, and there might also be inside involvement. There might be workers who are involved in providing information or things like that, but not to the obvious sense where we can say every farm attack is an inside job.Chris Steyn (07:39.437)So if you say with military precision, just what do you mean by that? Trained attackers?Jacques (07:44.914)These guys, if they're not trained, they are very well experienced. They have to have some sort of knowledge of what they're doing. They're not newbies to this. They'll have scouts in certain positions. Like I said, they'll recce the farm. They'll study what we call the cycle of movement, the proof of life, to see when the farmers, when they leave, when they go back. A very common thing is to attack them when they come back from church on Sundays, for instance. So that has been recce'd for at least more than a week because they know exactly what time they leave for church and they know what time they come back. Then scouting positions have been found on farms, places where people have laid out and you can find cigarettes, butts, you know, where they sat smoking and must have been a few days with very good vantage points on their targets. So that's what I mean by that. The other thing is also that these guys often escape on foot and they get picked up by other vehicles on a distant road somewhere. So it was planned. It's not just getting out of there. Other times they'll escape in the farmer's vehicle and then just abandon the vehicle somewhere else and get picked up by another vehicle. So the escape routes are planned. We've seen signal jammers being used in farm attacks so that people can't phone or radio for help. So that is not a crime of opportunity and it's not someone who's stealing because he's hungry.Chris Steyn (09:02.061)Do you think some of these farm attackers are linked to organised crime syndicates?Jacques (09:08.327)They definitely have to be. I don't have any proof to tell you this is exactly the link, but just in the case of things that are often stolen during farm attacks are firearms, for instance. You need to know what to do with a stolen firearm. You need to get it back into a black market cycle somehow, get it sold off. You're not just going to sit with it under your bed, I don't believe. So whatever gets stolen, phones and things that can be traced, need to get handed off and diverged into a black market cycle in a manner that is safe for the criminal and not easily traceable. So in that sense, they have to be involved with criminal networks, yes.Chris Steyn (09:44.789)In how many cases are foreigners involved?Jacques (09:49.256)Well, we actually did research a few years ago. We did reports on the prosecutions regarding the farm attacks and farm murders. According to the prosecutions, there were way more South African citizens involved in these attacks and murders than there were foreign nationals. That being said, there are definitely foreign nationals involved. We know this. And we know also, especially in border areas, guys come across the border, commit crimes, and then they just go back over the border again and they can't be pursued. So it's not something to play down, but we have to be realistic. Both of these narratives are not quite true. The one that says that it's foreign nationals committing all these crimes, to an extent yes, but no, not all of them. And the other people are saying that it's just simply locally planned people who are trying to outperform us is also not completely true because there are other aspects as well, such as the involvement of foreign nationals and other crimes.Chris Steyn (10:42.251)What have farm attackers caught and convicted and sentenced said about their motives?Jacques (10:50.931)This is an interesting question. It's been hardly debated in farm attack research circles for quite a number of years now I know the late professor dr. Rudolph Zinn - may he rest in peace. I knew he was a good guy. He did research into this effect that I'm not sure if it was ever published. I think he was still working on it But his conclusion was that most of the guys that he spoke to in prison said that they were just doing it for criminal motives. And with all due respect to his work - was really good at what he did - I'm not convinced by that. I wouldn't take the word of a convicted criminal for anything. And if you look at other cases such as, for instance, Nthuthuko Chuene, who in, I think, 1992 testified in front of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission that he was motivated to commit a farm murder by the chanting of ‘Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer’ that he heard at ANC rallies. He testified to this. Then you had this case in Western Cape where ‘Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer' was written against the farmhouse doors before the attack occurred in which the female victim was sexually assaulted, her husband was doused in gasoline, they tried to set him on fire but they didn't succeed in that. The language was there, it was written on the walls. You have the case of Amanda Platt: while she was being stabbed and beaten, her attacker shouted ‘Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer’. Now if this was simply an ordinarily motivated, criminally motivated incident, then I'm sorry, we certainly don't see crime in the same light.Chris Steyn (12:19.541)Do you think the only reason this is not happening in urban areas during home invasions is because neighbours would hear and be able to alert the authorities, whereas on the farms they can get away with it for hours without anybody being the wiser.Jacques (12:38.993)I think that is definitely one of the elements that increases the problem and which also adds to the uniqueness of the crime, which is again one of the arguments why it needs special attention. So I think that is one of the roles, but we also don't see this constant incitement against the urban population. We don't see someone chanting, “Kill the City Dweller, Kill the White City Dweller, Kill the Afrikaner City Dweller’. But when you chant ‘Kill the Boer, Kill the Farmer;, we know exactly who is being referred to and these are white farmers, rural dwellers. So I definitely think that plays a part. So both of those points that you raised are spot on.Chris Steyn (13:18.135)Jacques, how will AfriForum take this forward now? What are your next steps for you to protect farmers, to try and help protect farmers?Jacques (13:27.245)Well, we look at it from various angles. First of all, practical solutions. That's why we in 2012 started neighbourhood and farm watch structures. We currently have 178 rolled out across the country where we train volunteers in safety measures, safety techniques and give them the training to help play an active role in safeguarding their own communities within the confines of the law, of course. This goes all the way from basic training to what you're allowed to do as a citizen and what you're not allowed to do and all the way up to tactical firearms handling. And then we also obviously lobby for pressure internationally and locally. We've seen that, we hope that the work that we've been doing has had some kind of an impact on the steps that the US has now taken. We're not that vain or naive to say that it's because of what we did, but we hope that we had some kind of role in that to play. Because this is what we've been asking for, for international pressure so that the South African government can stop dismissing minorities' complaints and concerns the way that they have been doing for the last 30 years. Something else that I also want to tell you about is we're working towards getting the government to classify farm attacks as a priority crime. There's a special section for that, which will mean that it will then become the purview of The Hawks to investigate farm attacks and to take these crimes more seriously than currently under-resourced, under-staffed rural police stations. So we really hope in government we'll come to the table with that. We've got a petition running at the moment as well. We were asking people to give their support so that we can get the government on board with this. And we will continue building out our safety structures and we'll continue applying that pressure until government hears and does it.Chris Steyn (15:11.191)What additional pressure would you like to be put on South Africa from external actors like the US?Jacques (15:19.495)Well, the main point that we make is we want to see pressure applied, whatever pressure it is, to the guilty parties. So that is to the politicians, that is to the decision makers. We don't want the country at all to be punished because of the corruptness and incompetence of the ANC government. We want to see that specific individuals are targeted, whether this be by personal sanctions, travel restrictions, or whatever the US can come up with. I think that would be a way more constructive direction to move in than subject to rising tariffs or things like that.Chris Steyn (15:52.023)Thank you. That was Jacques Broodryk, the Chief Spokesperson for Community Safety at AfriForum speaking to BizNews. I'm Chris Steyn. Thank you, Jacques.Jacques (16:00.711)Thank you, Chris.