Picture: these armed tribesmen are constantly threatening the De Villiers family – note the Mugabe t-shirts they are wearing. Their body language on this picture is very clear – and this is what the De Villiers family have to endure 24 hours a day. These aren’t idle threats — seven Afrikaner and white English-speaking farmers have already been murdered in this one province alone since the start of this year. Two of the men suspected of murdering KZN farmer Andy Main in a violent farm attack were arrested only today.
African Crisis, October 1, 2007
Jaap de Villiers, the Afrikaner farmer who is constantly being threatened with death and harassed with violent land invasions from a neighbouring Zulu tribe, has given in and will sell up, says his situation has become so intolerable that he has reluctantly agreed to sell—but only at a fair price.
De Villiers’ farm is located near the Boer-era town of Vryheid—which means “Freedom”—named after the fact that this had been built enroute to the Boers’ establishment of the Transvaal republic.
“I can still take it (the terrorism) but I have to think of my wife and children,” Jaap de Villiers, 76, owner of the cattle farm Uitval said on Sunday. De Villiers, his wife Ester, 50, and their two sons, Jacob Paul, 13, and Jacob Hendrik, 9, live on the farm near Vryheid.De Villiers’ farm is surrounded on three sides by tribal land. King Bheki Zulu bought the other two farms from commercial farmers many years ago.
The Afrikaner said nobody had ever told him that 147 Zulu families had just recently filed a claim on a small section of his farm under the Land Reform Act. The claim was yet to be processed by the Department of Land Affairs but the tribesmen have showed up there repeatedly with aggressive behaviour, demanding that he vacate the farm at once.
De Villiers was not aware of the land claim at all and only heard it from the news media—the Department of Land Affairs had never bothered to tell him about it. “They damaged my water pipes last week. They’re trapping my cattle in snares. They start veld fires. I can take it, but if I’m no longer around, (i.e. if I am murdered) my family will suffer.”
“They’re trying to intimidate me so that I’ll just say ‘Take the land.’ But I can’t give up my whole life.”
http://www.africancrisis.co.za/Article.php?ID=18320&