[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] 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.
| Twenty-four hours before Mr Bekker's killing, the nation's most controversial politician, Julius Malema (leader of the Marxist-Leninist Economic Freedom Fighters party (EFF)), had chanted an anthem entitled 'Kill the Boer' — a term for white farmers — at a rally of 90,000 followers. |
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.'
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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.
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'.
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. iWhite 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.
More statistics at the link. And more about the miscreants who murdered Mr. Bekker. 
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