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June 30, 2025 - Epoch Times
23:21
What’s Behind the Killing of White Farmers in South Africa? | Rob Hersov
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In South Africa, we have two farm attacks a day, two murders of farmers a week, and of those farm murders, 20% of them involve rape and torture.
In this episode, I speak with South African businessman Rob Hersoff to get a read on what's really happening in the country.
What is the real story of what's happening to white farmers in South Africa today?
What role has Iran and Russia played in the region?
We're one year into our coalition government.
And they're finding their feet.
But the ANC is still trying to push forward their racist and socialist ideology.
And the coalition is only just now working out how to say no.
And what can we expect from U.S.-South Africa relations moving forward?
After the confrontational meeting between the two presidents last month?
Sir Ramaposa went back to South Africa and proclaimed his meeting as a huge victory.
I think America is about to unleash serious punishment, not on South Africa, but on the leaders.
This is American Thought Leaders, and I'm Yanya Keller.
Rob Hersop, such a pleasure to have you on American Thought Leaders.
Thank you, Jan.
Great to be here, all the way from Cape Town.
That's right.
And, you know, something very significant happened today.
Israel has launched a series of attacks, preemptive attacks against Iranian nuclear facilities, but also against Iranian leadership, nuclear and otherwise.
And by all accounts, has had a pretty profound impact.
A lot of the Iranian leadership has been actually removed.
Now, it strikes me that there's probably an impact here for South Africa.
So what do you see happening here?
So there is an impact, and it's a very interesting one.
The African National Congress has been receiving money from Iran to fill up its poorest financials.
They were bankrupt.
And then all of a sudden, they had more than enough money to pay their bills, pay their salaries, but also launch the ICJ case against Israel.
And the ANC has been relying on Russia and China, but very much Iran, to keep it afloat financially and have this sort of support required on the international stage.
South Africa is one of the top 10 countries to vote against America in the United Nations on almost every occasion.
And having Iran out of action, certainly for the time being, if not permanently, will be a big blow for the ANC.
Well, so let's go back to this recent meeting with President Cyril Ramafosa and President Trump.
I mean, Cyril Ramafosa wanted to, you know, reset the relationship with America.
And of course, we know all about the president playing some of the, you know, so some of the actions, significant actions taken against South African whites and so forth and confronted him in this, in the very public way.
How is this reset going?
And also, does this change?
I mean, this sounds like a profound change from what you're saying in terms of what the ANC is going to do.
Does that affect this reset idea?
So when Donald Trump announced tariffs across the board on countries and then said, you can see I'm serious.
I won't put tariffs on everyone, reciprocal tariffs, but you've got 90 days to come and see me and negotiate trade deals.
And 70, I think 70 countries turned up very quickly to negotiate trade deals with America.
South Africa was very slow to move.
And South Africa's interest in meeting Donald Trump didn't seem to be to talk about trade and tariffs.
It seemed more to be, as you put it, to reset the relationship.
And Sororamaposa, in my view, went to see Donald Trump to try and explain, South Africa is a sovereign nation.
We can do what we like.
We have a constitution.
We have a democracy.
And if we're going to implement laws like expropriation without compensation, black economic empowerment, and other laws, we have every right to do so.
And you, America, need to understand what we're doing and respect it.
That was Cyril Ramapose's intention.
Donald Trump, on the other hand, is not at all impressed with South Africa.
And I understand that entirely.
South Africa has voted against America and the United Nations on a highly consistent basis.
South Africa has been in bed with Russia, China, and very much Iran, enemies of America.
South Africa has been very anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, launched the ICJ case against Israel, funded by Iran, has done everything possible to poke America in the eye and upset America.
And I think on a bipartisan basis, Democrats and Republicans, America's had enough.
And Donald Trump decided, when Sarah Ramaposa came to the White House, to not what I call do a Zelensky on him directly, but was actually very intelligent in how he approached his meeting with Seur Ramaposa.
He didn't directly attack the ANC or Ramaposa, but he showed on the television with the famous dim the light.
He showed on the television screen a minority party with almost 10% of the voting population, so 60 million people, 6 million South Africans, to extrapolate the number, who support the EFF.
Donald Trump showed a video of 100,000 people, red berets, jumping up and down in a football stadium, singing, kill the boer, kill the farmer.
And what Donald Trump was cleverly trying to do was to say, listen, Mr. Soramaposa, I'll show you the respect of you being here to try and talk to me about resetting the relationship.
But how the hell can this happen in your country?
And just to finish this thought, in South Africa, we have two farm attacks a day, two murders of farmers a week.
And of those farm murders, 20% of them involve rape and torture.
So that was Donald Trump's message to him.
So you want us to reset the relationship?
Well, how can you allow this to happen in your country?
That's a fascinating explanation of what happened.
But what has been the impact?
Has there actually been a positive impact?
Has been there a reduction in farm attacks?
No, there hasn't been any decrease in farm attacks.
Cyril Ramaposa Went back to South Africa and proclaimed his meeting as a huge victory.
In my view, it was a farce.
And South Africa did not come out of it looking at all good.
Donald Trump did.
And there's been no concrete action yet from America on South Africa.
But the ANC has been trumpeting it as a great success.
We told Donald Trump, you're a sovereign nation, we know what we're doing, he should leave us alone.
But there's been no discussion on trade and tariffs, certainly not outside the boardroom.
We may not know what's going on behind the scenes.
And if anything, I think America is about to unleash serious punishments, not on South Africa, but on the leaders, the ANC leaders, MK, EFF, anti-American and racist and socialist policies.
I think that's coming.
And as you know, Congressman Ronnie Jackson of Texas is putting together a bill, which will go to Congress and then to the Senate, which will be to sanction individuals in South Africa who've been guilty of those crimes.
Rob, we're going to take a quick break right now.
And folks, we're going to be right back.
And we're back with South African entrepreneur Rob Hersoff.
So let's unpack this whole issue of both farm attacks and then farmer murders.
Can you unpack this whole picture for me?
Like what has been happening and where do things stand now?
In the year 1994, when we went from white minority rule peacefully to democratic rule and Nelson Mandela came in as our first president, we had 80,000 commercial farmers.
We have 30,000 commercial farmers today.
So there's been a huge amount of persecution, pressure put on South African farmers.
And it's not just white farmers, predominantly white.
White people make up 7% of South Africa's population.
7%.
It used to be 20% in 1994.
We're now 7% of South Africa's population.
But white farmers own 22% of the arable land.
And so there's a lot of posturing by the leftists, by the ANC about the whites control all the farmland, the whites control all the land.
It's not true.
They're highly productive, the farmers, not just the white farmers, but they are being victimized, targeted.
And the EFF's hate speech, the kill the boar, kill the farmer, one settler, one bullet, and let's slit the throat of whiteness, has a direct impact on farm attacks.
So farm attacks spike after these rallies.
They spike after this hate speech.
And just to tell your viewers one more thing, our highest court deemed that those utterances, kill the boy, kill the farmer, one farmer, one settler, one bullet, was not hate speech.
Well, if that's not hate speech, I don't know what is.
But I can tell you right now that our judiciary is compromised.
And I'm not surprised that an ANC compromised judiciary came out with that ludicrous conclusion.
But before we go there, tell me a little bit about Julius Malema and the EFF.
I mean, if 10% of the voting population are behind this party, this is obviously a serious party in the country.
What are they about?
And I mean, on the face of it, the speech sounds about as extreme as it can get.
Julius Malemma was head of the ANC Youth League.
He's a highly intelligent populist and opportunist.
I've actually met him at a lunch meeting, and he made enormous sense.
He's highly intelligent.
And he's very dangerous, but he's an opportunist.
And when he left the ANC, he founded the Economic Freedom Fighters.
His party has nothing to do with the economy and nothing to do with freedom.
But his popularity as EFF amongst the voters has been declining and declining.
And he recently, in the last four months, lost most of his top lieutenants who left the EFF and joined Jacob Zuma's MK party.
MK stands for McUntew Esizwe, the Spear of the Nation.
And they were the armed element of the ANC prior to 1994, prior to the democratic elections.
Jacob Zuma was the president of South Africa from 2008 to 2017, preceding Seroramaposa.
And Jacob Zuma has reappeared just before the 2024 elections, where the ANC lost their majority for the first time in 30 years.
Jacob Zuma reappeared to compete in the elections with this new party called MK.
So I'll just give you the layout so the viewers can follow this.
The ANC has had a majority in South Africa since 1994.
In 2024, they lost the majority.
They dropped from 56% to 41%.
The next biggest party at 21% is the party that I would support, which is the Democratic Alliance.
Democratic Alliance are probably Judeo-Christian, free market, probably pro-the-West, pro-America, free enterprise party.
They're kind of centrist.
They'd be more Democrat than Republican, but let's call them centrist in South African terms.
And the Democratic Alliance has grown from almost obscurity, only controlling Cape Town in 1994, to controlling the whole of the Western Cape and numerous other large metros and pieces of other provinces.
And it's not just a white party anymore.
It's obviously at 21, 22%.
It's got a lot of black, Indian, and colored voters.
And for your viewers, coloured is a mix of white and other races, black and other.
So ANC at 41%, Democratic Alliance at 21, 22, Jacob Zuma and the MK Party at 15, and Julius Milema of his economic freedom fighters at around 8%, just under 10%.
And then a lot of smaller parties at the 1, 2, 3%.
And it's the first time our country has had a coalition government.
The ANC is the anchor tenant, and the Democratic Alliance is the main opposition joining the government of national unity, GNU.
And that's where we are today.
And in the meeting with Donald Trump, Suroramaposa dismissed the EFF as a minority irrelevant party.
But with just under 10%, that's not much of a minority.
That's a lot of people singing, kill the boah, kill the farmer.
And it's a very worrying situation.
So while we don't have genocide, we don't have extermination right now, the word that's been bandied around, we have a lot of elements that could lead to something like that in place already.
Well, as someone who's studied this issue quite a bit over the last 25 years, I can say that this sort of extreme incitement to violence, in this case killing, transparently, is an element of that journey to the mass killing.
It doesn't always happen, but it's a very absolutist, absolutist statement.
And I suspect that this is what you're alluding to here.
Well, it's already begun on the farmers.
Three times more likely to be killed as a South African farmer than as a policeman.
And a policeman twice as likely to be killed as an average citizen.
Cyril Ramaposa said to Donald Trump, South Africa is a violent country.
Lots of murders, lots of rapes, lots of terrible things happen.
The farm attacks are nothing special.
Well, that's not true.
If you're three times more likely to be murdered as a farmer than a policeman, there's something wrong.
And these attacks on farms spike after the hate speech.
So Cyril Ramaposa is not only out of touch, but he lies.
And if you look at the definition of genocide, there are 10 elements in the definition.
Number nine out of 10 is extermination.
There isn't extermination, I accept that.
But there's denial, there's racial classification, symbolization, dehumanization, persecution, organization.
A lot of these elements are in place.
They haven't lit the ovens yet.
You're telling me that the coalition government actually has the party that you support, which you believe is the centrist party of reason.
So isn't this changing anything?
It is.
But if you look at the allocation of ministerial positions in the government, we have 32 cabinet ministers, which is ludicrous.
Norway has 18 and Argentina has nine.
32 cabinet ministers.
And we have two deputy ministers.
We have 75 ministers altogether, all with security and blue lights and flying business class everywhere.
Huge waste, huge expense.
But that's not the point I'm trying to make.
The point I'm trying to make is that the Democratic Alliance, when they were negotiating with the ANC for their ministerial positions, were not given trade and industry, foreign affairs, treasury, finance, any of the key positions that affect economic growth ideology.
And, you know, we're one year into our coalition government, first time in 30 years, and they're finding their feet.
But the ANC is still trying to push forward their racist and socialist ideology.
And the coalition is only just now working out how to say no, how to coach the ANC ministers on talking to coalition partners and agreeing things before they announce them.
It's finding its feet.
And anyone who's looking from a distance will say, democracy is working in South Africa.
And it is.
We have free speech.
The fact that I can speak as openly as I do would not be the case in Iran, China, Russia, and many other countries.
I'd have disappeared by now or been taken out.
But I can speak freely in South Africa.
We have free speech.
Democracy is working, but it's working very, very slowly.
And our next national election is 2029.
Now, you said something quite strong.
You said that there's racist policies in place.
And so explain to me why you believe that.
So there are 140 race-based policies in South African law.
And the vast majority, 114 of them, 114, were introduced since 1994.
And many of them are definitively anti-white.
They may be written as supporting or benefiting previously disadvantaged people.
But when you read between the lines, they are fundamentally anti-white.
They're racist.
We also have laws, black economic empowerment, all started off as a good thing where everyone accepted the previously disadvantaged, which by the way meant all different black tribes, colored people and Indian people, need to be empowered in the economy.
And everyone bought into that.
Corporates, white people, and said, this is a good thing.
We need to help the previously disadvantaged.
What that has turned into is trillions of Rand have been looted from the government and forced through black economic empowerment to benefit 100 elite families.
So if you are a colored South African, an Indian South African, not a loyalist to the ANC or from a different black tribe, you just aren't black enough for black economic empowerment.
And so essentially what you're saying is that there is obviously this modicum of freedom that you're describing.
But at the same time, the policies, even with this coalition government, which is presumably already somewhat more moderate, basically the economy is still being driven into the ground and you're expecting basically chaos to reign if that actually happens.
100% right, John.
You've nailed it.
People say to me, hang on, Rob, you've got a coalition government with a centrist group like the Democratic Alliance.
How come expropriation without compensation, the most damagingly named bill you could ever imagine, has been signed into law under its watch?
Well, the reality was the whole thing had been pre-prepared by the ANC beforehand, and all Cyril Roan Pose had to do was sign it.
The opposition parties weren't part of the coalition at that point, and it was forced through, as were so many other laws, quickly, in time.
Now that the coalition's in place and they've gained the courage to say no to the ANC, the racist and socialist ideology that's being forced upon South Africa is being slowed.
But there are elements that people need to be aware of.
I'll give you a very interesting example.
When the ministries were being debated and handed out, Helen Ziller, who's the chairman of the Democratic Alliance Federal Committee and a real lioness of South Africa, an extraordinary woman, said to me an interesting thing.
She said, for some reason, the ANC won't let us come anywhere near the Department of Foreign Affairs, which is known as the Department of International Relations Cooperative, DERCO.
They won't even give us a deputy director, a deputy minister.
And we found out why, because the Islamists in the ANC, funded by Iran, wanted to control foreign affairs.
So they could put forward the case, the ICJ case against Israel, send a really nasty Islamist as our ambassador to Washington, who then publicly called Donald Trump a white supremacist and a racist.
And America said, well, you can go back to South Africa then.
And the Islamists of the ANC have controlled the Department of Foreign Affairs.
In addition, during the ANC's reign, all of the state-owned enterprises, the Electricity Supply Commission, Transnet, which is the rail network, the ports, South African Airways, were all captured by the state.
Any position of power in any state-owned enterprise, including down to municipal and town level, where a budget was involved, were given to loyalists or what they called cadres, C-A-D-R-E.
In South Africa, they called them caders, but I know it's a cadre.
So they put loyalists who were mostly incompetent into positions of power, positions of influence, and they captured the heights of the economy and the heights of democracy.
Our country, I'll give you two statistics that'll horrify you, is growing at less than 1% GDP and has been for the last five years.
It's barely growing, and our population growth is at 2%.
We're getting poorer every year.
Our fixed investment is 15% of GNP, whereas an emerging market should be 25%.
We are being deindustrialized, and every single one of our state-owned enterprises is bankrupt.
And here's the worst one of all.
Our official unemployment rate is 33%.
But we have a youth unemployment of 60%, the worst in the world by far.
And this is 100% as a result of the ANC and its racist and socialist policies.
Well, Rob, this has been an absolutely fascinating discussion for me.
A final thought as we finish?
There's always hope over experience.
Maybe we are the lucky nation, and maybe something good will happen.
Well, Rob Hirsov, it's such a pleasure to have had you on.
Thank you, Jan.
What an honor to be on Epoch Times and on your show.
Thank you all for joining Rob Hirsov and me on this episode of American Thought Leaders.
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