Bloodland Race Hate, Politics or Greed [2018]

In this report, Holmes asks whether the killing of white farmers is just a tragic fact of life, and death, in one of the world’s most violent societies - or whether it is indeed politically or racially motivated.

The siege mentality of white farmers is magnified by radical politicians like Julius Malema. His Economic Freedom Fighters party sprang from the country’s chronic failure to deliver land to landless blacks.

“We are taking the future into our own hands,” he tells a rally of dancing followers in their red berets. Then a chant: “Shoot to kill! Shoot to kill! Pow, pow!” as he pulls an imaginary trigger.

Recently Malema wedged the governing ANC into supporting expropriation of land without compensation. So far, the government has not seized any farmland without paying for it.

But white farmers say that already the private market for farmland has collapsed. “Why would you buy a farm if tomorrow the government is going to take it?” asks Jo-an Engelbrecht.

For now, Engelbrecht is digging in on his farm in the faint hope that President Cyril Ramaphosa can stabilize a country wracked by crime and corruption after a decade of Jacob Zuma’s rule. But for his daughter Tessa, her grandparents’ murder was the final straw. She wants out – maybe to Australia, if those hints of fast track visas materialize. “I wouldn’t think twice if I got the chance,” she says.