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Police weapons have been used in farm attacks. Not just personal weapons issued to every officer, but rifles that have to be signed out from the station. We know police ammunition has been used in farm attacks’, Reveals a police Sergeant.
In the first 40 days into 2018 there were 41 farm attacks, and 5 murders on white farms. Being a white farmer in South Africa is statistically one of the most dangerous jobs on the planet.
According to ISS research, there are around 152,000 serving members of the police force, and around 32,000 commercial farmers, but the murder rate within these two distinct groups is roughly the same, 145 deaths per 100,000. But by far the most uncomfortable truth of all is that serving members of the South African police force are complicit in these attacks on farmers in the country.
In 2012, a social worker – Riah Phiyega – was appointed as the National Commissioner for Police. She appointed a trained teacher as her deputy, and her Head of Strategic Management was trained in theology.
A social worker, a teacher, and a preacher heading up the police force in one of the most dangerous countries on the planet.
And I’m told Phiyega’s clear instructions were to protect President Zuma and his interests, not the security interests of ordinary citizens. This is just one example of endemic corruption here.
UPDATE. Riah Phiyega was suspended in 2015 with immediate effect, on full pay. Phiyega was told of her immediate suspension in Parliament as she was directing her senior management team to answer MPs’ questions on why more than 7,000 dockets in the Free State had been closed.
After an assistant bent down to chat to her, she closed her notebook and took her time, but ultimately got up to walk out, without blinking. It was done within 10 minutes. Top police managers were left shocked – and at least two declined to comment.
A South African Police Sergeant confirmed, the police are actively involved in White Farm Attacks.
“We have arrested serving members of the police during house robberies. Police weapons have been used in the attacks. Not just personal weapons issued to every officer, but rifles that have to be signed out from the station. We know police ammunition has been used in farm attacks.”
The victims of farm attacks have told reporters that the perpetrators went unpunished, that there were never any charges brought because the evidence was lost or the docket destroyed.
In 2016, a doctoral thesis on cash-in-transit robbers in South Africa who the author interviewed criminals in prison made it very clear: for a price, it was easy to buy the cooperation of certain police offers.
Services that could be bought included: cooperation with the police to obtain rifles; a police safe house in which to store stolen money; the disappearance of police dockets; the investigating officer agreeing to be less than efficient in his investigations.
It is devastating to realize that corrupt police are willing to equip farm attackers with arms and ammunition, are willing to conceal stolen cash for their cut.
The sergeant also tells me that when a crime-in-progress is called in, there are routinely 16 or 17 cars out on patrol.
He says typically only two of them respond. Some claim their radio stopped working. Others say that they were at lunch. And even when they do respond, they don’t make an arrest because the perpetrator is a “brother.” (And brothers are allowed to go free.)
Being a brother is not about color; it’s about political affiliation. If you are part of the African National Congress (ANC), EFF (Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), or Black Land First (BLF) organizations, you are a brother.
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