Documenting the deterioration of human rights in South Africa: Ernst van Zyl

Key topics:South Africa’s 2025 human rights abuses target minorities and farmersANC government escalates racial violence, property threats, and censorshipInternational scrutiny exposes discriminatory laws and attacks on heritage.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 at 5:30am 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..By Ernst van Zyl.As the saying goes, there are some decades in which nothing happens and then there are weeks in which decades happen. 2025 certainly has been a year in which decades took place. One of these seismic developments was the worst post-1994 diplomatic crisis in South Africa, which has continued to worsen, thanks to the ANC-led government’s reckless behaviour and denialism.The spotlight was shone on inconvenient truths about the South African government on the international stage in 2025 by prominent figures and institutions such as President Donald Trump, the US State Department, Elon Musk, and more. The reactions from most international observers to these revelations were ones of shock, outrage and disgust. There was nowhere for the ANC-led government to hide, other than to desperately and baselessly dismiss these revelations as “misinformation”. The ANC and the government’s impossible task was to convince the world not to believe their own eyes. It’s one thing to take on Trump, it’s a whole different kettle of fish to take on reality itself. Reality did a lot of bullying this year.The main issues raised, amongst others, include the government’s many racially discriminatory policies, threats to private property rights, and incitement of violence against Afrikaners and other minorities through chants such as “Kill the Boer”. Let’s briefly unpack each.To determine which country’s government is the most racist in the world today, the number of race-based laws it has on its statute book is a good indicator. The South African government has over 145 such racist laws, which I reckon earns them the title of the most race-mad regime on earth..Private property rights remain under increasing threat in South Africa, by the ANC, which does not see Zimbabwean dictator Robert Mugabe’s land grabs as wrong and destructive, but as a fundamentally good idea with only some flaws in its implementation. In August 2025, President Ramaphosa once again praised Zimbabwe’s ‟ambitious land reform policies” and said, “South Africa and the entire region should take a leaf from Zimbabwe’s agriculture model”. Those land reform policies of the early 2000s referred to, involved chaotic and often violent land seizures. Private property rights were severely violated when thousands of white farmers were chased off their land, attacked and some even murdered. This resulted in the collapse of the Zimbabwean agricultural sector and economy, and mass human rights violations.One of the most politically inconvenient facts about South Africa over the past few years has been the steady deterioration of the human rights situation under the ANC’s watch, as confirmed by the US State Department’s Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor’s detailed report, released in August 2025. The report reads: ‟The [South African] government did not take credible steps to investigate, prosecute, and punish officials who committed human rights abuses, including inflammatory racial rhetoric against Afrikaners and other racial minorities, or violence against racial minorities.”What would you say is the purest expression of hatred towards a group of people? I would say publicly calling for their murder, based on their identity, while blaming them for almost every problem caused by the government. That is exactly what is happening to Afrikaners and the white minority in South Africa. After Julius Malema and the EFF once again chanted “Kill the Boer, kill the farmer” on Human Rights Day 2025, AfriForum in writing urged President Ramaphosa to condemn this hateful chant. The President’s spokesperson emphatically responded that the presidency would do no such thing..Heinrich Heine wrote, “Where they burn books, they will ultimately burn people too.” I reckon the same logic applies to the destruction of statues, monuments and language. Those who vandalise statues will also attack the people those statues represent. Those who seek to destroy a language, ultimately seek to exterminate the people who speak it. Multiple statues and monuments representing minority heritage were vandalised in 2025. In April the statue of Afrikaner icon General Koos de la Rey in the small town of Lichtenburg was vandalised and the bust on his grave was beheaded, while in September, the President Paul Kruger statue group in Pretoria was seriously damaged. The latter attack followed exactly one week after the EFF in Parliament called for the destruction of Afrikaner and white minority monuments. Shortly after the Kruger statue was damaged, EFF national spokesperson Sinawo Thambo celebrated the attack by describing it on social media as “great news”.The ANC and their allies’ only reaction to the abovementioned disturbing facts has been to ignore them or to shout “misinformation”. If these were in fact baseless falsehoods, they would have calmly refuted them by presenting the truth as a counter. However, the response from the government has been to escalate the situation from just claiming “misinformation,” to blatant, crude censorship of Solidarity’s banner that exposed uncomfortable truths about the government, as well as an ongoing criminal treason investigation against AfriForum and Solidarity for daring to talk about these issues internationally. This is certainly not how a government who wants the truth to prevail would respond; this is the response of a cover-up artist trying to sweep the mess under the carpet.It is within this context of increasing international pressure and scrutiny that AfriForum has compiled another The world must know report. This report extensively documents how Afrikaners and other minorities are being targeted, scapegoated, excluded, murdered and discriminated against in South Africa, with every claim accompanied by a source. AfriForum’s report demonstrates how the human rights situation in South Africa, especially regarding minority rights, has continued to deteriorate in 2025. It highlights how the government’s racially discriminatory policies are increasing in number and severity, private property rights are increasingly under attack, incitement of violence and hatred against minority groups from powerful politicians is escalating, critics of the government are subjected to intimidation, censorship and police investigation, and minority heritage and education are being targeted, attacked and marginalised. .AfriForum’s The world must know report can be downloaded at www.TheWorldMustKnow.co.za.

Documenting the deterioration of human rights in South Africa: Ernst van Zyl

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