CONCLUSION
Human Rights Watch, August 2001
An Evaluation of the Rural Protection Plan
On the face of it, there is a large area of common interest between workers and farmers with regard to the prevention of crime. Farmers complain of the encroachment of predatory strangers on their land. Given high rates of stock theft, it would appear that workers also have a powerful interest in detecting and reporting the presence of strangers on farms. There can be little doubt that the recruitment of workers into the rural protection plan can significantly enhance its capacity. Its informational capacity, and in particular, the efficacy of its early warning systems, appear to suffer from lack of worker participation.
Bringing workers into the rural protection plan, however, is fraught with difficulty. A farmer is unlikely to accept the presence in the plan of a workforce he believes is harbouring families who do not provide labour, and perhaps commit intermittent cattle theft. A working family, in turn, that believes it could face eviction at any moment, is unlikely to be a reliable source of information where the farmer's interests are at stake. (711)
There is a clear need for a comprehensive evaluation of the rural protection plan, from the perspective not only of the commercial farming community but also of farm residents and those living in the former homeland areas that surround commercial farmland. At present, the rural protection plan does not adequately meet the needs of farmers for protection, and it has actually increased insecurity for other sectors of the population in some areas. It still shows clearly its origins as a response to demands for action by the commercial farming sector, a response which did not ensure that the plan addressed the concerns of the entire rural population, white and black, men and women, for protection against violent crime.
The "farmwatch" systems and the use of commandos and private security to protect farming communities has increased security for (mostly white) farm owners. Given the strains on police capacity, the participation in security systems of civilian reservists may be unavoidable. However, in too many cases, local commandos, "farmwatch" structures, or private security companies are simply acting to protect the interests of farmers and not the wider community. Abuses inevitably result, some of them very serious. Even when police officers patrol with the commandos, both state agents, there is little scope for accountability to or control by the wider community. If the police involved are reservists, there is still less control.
Many living or working in the farming communities believe that the commando system is an anachronism and a recipe for abuse, and that it should be abolished. Others, however, including many of those involved in the rural protection plan at national level, see the commandos as an essential part of the system, and the main reason for the high arrest rate in cases of violent crime against farm owners or managers, due to their rapid response capabilities. However, it is clear that at least some commando units are responsible for very serious abuses, and that training and controls are insufficient to ensure proper discipline.
In many areas, commando membership has declined in recent years. Among those who have left the state security forces are many who have set up private security companies. Others now participate in private non-profit farmwatch structures. These private farmwatch systems or private security companies are even less accountable than the commandos, reporting only to the farmwatch structures or the people paying them, who may have little commitment to disciplining those found guilty of abuse. The management of the Ixopo Community/Farm Watch, for example, took no disciplinary action against John Arkley for months, even after he was charged with murder. The regulation of private security companies is woefully inadequate. Although proposed new legislation will strengthen the regulatory regime, it could still be improved in several regards. There are currently no concrete proposals for legislation to regulate "farmwatch" or similar private non-profit initiatives.
The rural protection plan needs to be restructured to ensure that it meets the needs of all residents of the farming communities and addresses public concerns about the quality of police services. However, the answer is not to allow one powerful group to take on the role of the police and operate parallel, essentially unaccountable structures. What is needed is a protection plan that meets the needs of farm owners and far less powerful farm residents alike.
Human Rights Watch believes that in all cases other than emergencies, police and not soldiers should carry out policing duties. Accordingly, the commando units made up of army reservists should not be involved in policing. Civilians who wish to be involved in policing on a part time basis should be police reservists, and should receive training in policing skills and instruction on the laws of South Africa and respect for human rights, rather than army-style boot camp. Where soldiers are deployed for policing duties, they should not have full police powers, but only those that are required to fill a support role. For example, police should carry out duties such as house searches, even if soldiers are deployed to establish a cordon around the house. This objective should form part of the current review of the Defence Act.
There would be resistance to this idea among the commandos, for both good and bad reasons. Among the good reasons are the fact that commando members get paid a small amount which, though almost token for a commercial farmer (three to four hundred rands a month), assists to cover expenses and for black employees may form a substantial addition to income; police reservists receive no payment at all. In addition, those individuals who are both members of commandos and police reservists report that the army logistical and administrative systems are simply more efficient than those in the police service. As one commented, "I joined up to be a police reservist three years ago, and did all the courses, but I'm still waiting for my uniform today, I don't even have an ID card showing that I am a police officer. If you join the commandos, the whole system goes quicker." (712) Others note that discipline among the police is a big problem, so that many police have no pride in their job, absenteeism is rife, equipment is not maintained, and so forth, while the army has a stronger public service ethos. The bad reasons include the fact that the police service is now perceived by many white farmers as simply "too black" in its command structures.
Those in charge of implementing the rural protection plan should take urgent steps to implement a transition from military to civilian policing. Pending this transition, immediate steps should also be taken to bring part-time members of the security forces, as well as their full-time colleagues, under proper discipline and control. All those involved in policing areas must be required and trained to respond even-handedly to reported crimes, irrespective of the color or social status of the victim. Commando units carrying out policing duties should be accompanied by a full time police officer, preferably of middle or senior rank, not a reservist, who should be in command as regards all policing duties. The SANDF should urgently develop an effective internal mechanism for handling public complaints and to ensure proper disciplinary action against those who have allegedly committed abuses. In addition, the Independent Complaints Directorate (ICD), the body responsible for investigating complaints against the police, should be empowered to investigate or oversee the investigation of complaints against SANDF members deployed for policing purposes. The Departments of Justice and Safety and Security should take particular steps to ensure the effective prosecution of cases against individual farmers, private security operatives, or vigilante groups, for example by deploying detectives and prosecutors from outside the area, who would be less susceptible to pressure from powerful local interests, to follow these cases. There should be exemplary prosecutions where particular commando units, farmwatch schemes or private security companies have a reputation for abuse, ideally carried out by the National Directorate of Public Prosecutions (NDPP).
Stricter controls should also be enforced against private security initiatives, including farmwatch and similar private schemes, to ensure that they do not act as vigilante groups. Government should introduce legislation to regulate such schemes, and work with representatives of commercial farmers and other interested parties to develop a code of conduct for those who participate in them. Private security companies and farmwatch structures should be permitted only to carry out preventive patrols and "citizen's arrests" of persons actually found in the course of committing a crime. They should be required to hand individuals arrested to the police without delay, and they should be prohibited from taking the initiative in conducting house searches for illegal weapons or similar activities, but required rather to pass relevant information to the police. Laws regulating the private security industry should strengthen the provisions relating to the withdrawal of registration for security service providers found guilty of a violent crime or of improper conduct of a serious nature; and should require the police and courts to report to the regulatory authority alleged crimes, charges, and convictions involving security service providers.
The government should consider merging the structures of the rural protection plan--in particular the Groundlevel Operational Coordinating Committees--with the community policing forums. Under the current system, both sets of meetings are poorly attended, while the rural protection plan is often seen as being for the farmers, and the CPFs for the black community. The new structures should involve representatives of farm owners, NGOs working on land or farmworkers' rights issues, and farm owners. They should also involve women and organizations assisting women, to ensure that issues related to violence against women are addressed. Those attending these meetings need to see results, since in too many rural areas community representatives have stopped attending CPFs simply because they find there is no response from the police, or indeed it is the police themselves who are involved in crime. If the powerful lobby of the farm owners attended the same meetings and put pressure on local police stations to attend to the problems of the black communities as well as their own, substantial progress in creating a common security initiative could be achieved. In the Western Cape, a new structure known as a "community safety forum" (CSF) is being piloted in several areas. The CSFs are chaired by local government, and involve all government sectors--not only the police--in efforts to combat crime. These pilot projects may form a useful model for policing in the commercial farming areas. Trained facilitators may be needed to keep the new structures on track, in order to build trust between different participants and ensure that they actually become a route for ensuring a greater consensus in setting policing priorities.
The government should also review the collection of statistics relating to violence on farms. Currently, official statistics tend to give greater prominence to crime against farm owners and managers, whereas the real need is for accurate statistics on all violent crime on farms, including assaults on farm residents by other farm residents and by farm owners or managers. Specific crime codes should be established, including, for example, for murders or assaults on farm owners or managers, murders or assaults on farmworkers or residents (including sexual assaults in all cases), and for illegal evictions. A parallel effort to ensure that all reported incidents are correctly recorded by police will be necessary. Human Rights Watch also believes that it is important that the figures for "farms" and "smallholdings" be disaggregated.
Some formal proposals for a more comprehensive rural safety plan have been made. The Department of Land Affairs in the Free State developed a proposal in 1998--in advance of the national rural safety summit--for "participatory rural safety plans," which was extensively debated among interested parties, but was eventually dropped due to resistance from the Free State Agricultural Union. (713) The proposal placed "farm attacks" firmly within "the underlying socio-political context" of the apartheid past and the continuing massive inequalities of power present in farming communities today, urging farmers to work in cooperation with other rural dwellers. It argued that "the premise on which [existing] safety plans and farmwatch schemes are based is fundamentally flawed," because "emergency reactionary measures will only serve to isolate and marginalize communities." Accordingly the department recommended that:
Farmwatch groups must constitute part of a greater Rural Safety Plan, where area based partnerships are established as joint ventures between the farmers, farmworkers, commandos, the local police and the district policing forum. They must be assisted by district based Rural Safety Networks which should include the following role players:
Dept. of Safety and Security, SA Police Service, Local Police Reserve Service, SANDF, Local Commando, DLA District Office and field staff, Local Magistrates Office, Local Municipality--TRC/TLC, District Farmers Association/Agricultural Union, Church Bodies, Farmworker Unions, NGOs, Advice Centres, Constituency Offices of all political parties.
The role of such a Rural Safety Network would be to ensure that contact between the farmers/farmworkers and the local police could be improved through training and planning.... Such area based Rural Safety Networks would be supported administratively and logistically by a Provincial Rural Safety Network Committee, with a specialised safety person located in the office of the MEC Safety and Security. (714)
Concluding that "Properly managed rural safety plans in which farm dwellers are valued and play a central role need to be developed across the country," the document proposed standard procedures to respond to "farm attacks."
Less ambitiously, Mike de Lange, a farmer who has monitored violence on farms for several years, has put forward a proposal to the KwaZulu-Natal government for a "security desk" to be established (effectively a funded and expanded version of what de Lange already operates from his farmhouse) to "gather intelligence on all crime incidents and information on pending possible conflict, of any sort, in rural KwaZulu/Natal communities (farms, tribal areas and conservation areas)." (715) The security desk would then convey that information to all appropriate authorities, including administrative structures as well as the security forces, and facilitate proper communication between those authorities as well as the extension of the rural protection plan to those areas where it is not currently operational--that is, the "tribal areas" formerly within the KwaZulu homeland. De Lange believes that "99 percent of the black community is sick and tired of crime too. The rural protection plan won't work unless you include the tribal areas; you need structures for the rural areas to get their problems solved too." (716)
Key to the resolution of the problems surrounding law enforcement in South Africa's commercial farming areas will be the creation of a common understanding among farm owners and farm residents of the priorities in relation to violent crime and the response needed. This will, however, depend on farm owners and residents seeing themselves as having the same interests in this regard, something that will be very difficult to develop in the context of South Africa's deeply divided society. Ultimately, it will depend on a reduction in the stark economic inequalities so obvious in the South African countryside.
Class, Race, Gender, and Violence on Farms
The Special Rapporteur is absolutely convinced that without a complete overhauling of the [South African] criminal justice apparatus, the retraining of its members and the creation of a more representative service, violence in general, and violence against women in particular, will never be contained. (717)
In South Africa, the heritage of apartheid and legislated segregation remain potent factors, and racial discrimination in the criminal justice system, as elsewhere in society, is a serious concern. (718) Although South Africa has a wide array of criminal laws that are today ostensibly race-neutral (by comparison with the apartheid era laws that criminalized certain activities for blacks only), de facto discriminatory law enforcement practices continue to be a chronic problem. South Africa's criminal justice system is, as was noted in a 1997 report by the United Nations special rapporteur on violence against women, a product of the system of racial and political oppression operated by former governments. It is also a reflection of a society which, like many others, has historically treated women as second-class citizens. (719)
Consequently, while it is true that the criminal justice system is currently under severe strain due to the country's high crime rate, the state response to violent crime on farms cannot be viewed only in the context of South Africa being generally a violent country. Those living on farms in South Africa are not a homogeneous group. They are divided by their race, gender, socio-economic status, age, and other characteristics. These factors operate individually or in combination to differentiate farm owners and residents--whether workers or tenants--from one another and determine, among other things, their access or lack of access to justice when they are victims of abuse. As this report shows, the criminal justice process continues to give more favorable treatment to whites than blacks. At the same time, race and gender often converge to make black women among the most powerless in society. In such situations, rates of violence against poor black women remain particularly high and largely unremedied. (720)
Because white farm owners have historically had a close relationship to state institutions, including the police and justice system, and continue in many areas to do so, and because they are economically much more powerful than their black neighbors, they continue to have a privileged relationship to the system. White farm owners and white members of the security forces in the rural areas (sometimes the same people), socialize together and often have family links. It is unlikely, as demonstrated by this report, that those same security force members will act swiftly against one of their own, and probable that they will believe the word of another white person over that of a black farm resident. Even where black police officers have been promoted to become station commissioners, the economic reality of rural life remains much as it has always been, and acting against locally powerful figures a potentially dangerous activity. Moreover, a police officer is likely to need the cooperation of white farmers in so many aspects of his or her work--including in some cases the loan of vehicles--that it is easier to turn a blind eye to abuse than to act against it. For the same reasons, complaints by farm owners of criminal activity affecting them usually receive priority attention.
Continuing racism, racial discrimination, and racial tension combine with gender discrimination to establish complex patterns of dominance and oppression of black women. While violence against women of all races was historically tolerated in South Africa, as in many other societies, by law and custom, violence against black women (whether committed by white or black men) was especially ignored. Under apartheid laws and practices, "Violence against women was perceived as violence against white women, implicit in that the violence was undertaken by black men. As a result, instances of black men raping white women received greater attention and were treated with severity and racist intolerance by the state. One of the consequences was that, for example, far more black men have been hanged for raping white women in South Africa, than have white men been hanged for raping black women." (721)
Even in post-apartheid South Africa, racist and sexist attitudes continue to flourish when it comes to the state's response to violence against black women. All the elements that traditionally put women at a disadvantage--poverty, poor housing, poor health services, a lack of safety and security, poor education, and lack of information--exist on the farms and often compound women's vulnerability to abuse. (722) In addition to all these risk factors, the sole gatekeepers to women's safety on farms are often their employers and male relatives, often the very people who abuse them. Women are not inclined to report such cases out of fear of retaliation from farm owners, managers, and family members. When women report these abuses, local authorities often do not take their accounts seriously.
The discrimination that black people and women face in their workplaces is directly linked to the daily violence they experience. For example, the acute power imbalance on farms between farm owners and farmworkers and men and women all work to the disadvantage of women. The relationships are divided on racial and patriarchal lines, with women placed near the bottom of the ladder and subjected to violence and abuse by the rest. (723) As one example of the way in which discrimination can lead to violence, some women living and working on the wine farms in the Western Cape complained to Human Rights Watch that they did not receive monetary support from their husbands, whose pay is spent on buying wine. (724) When they complain to their husbands, women are often beaten; because their housing is dependent on their husbands, they cannot leave or take any action to protect themselves. (725) When women on farms are raped, whether by farm owners or by other farm residents, they face barriers when they seek protection that are common to other farm residents but compounded by sexist attitudes within the criminal justice system. And while gender discrimination generally affects all women, white women, because of their race and economic position, fare much better in accessing justice when they become victims of violence, compared to their black counterparts. (726)
Leaving aside issues of racial or sexual prejudice, commercial farms are often remote from urban centers and from the routes covered by "black taxis," the privately-owned minibus taxis used by most black people in South Africa for transportation. Farmworkers and residents are therefore often dependent on the goodwill of the farm owner or occasional visitors for transportation. As a consequence, it is very difficult for them to access police, courts, government medical officers and other services, such as victim support programs, when they are victims of violence, since most of these services are based in towns. Lack of education, a heritage of the years of "bantu education" policies under the previous government and current confusion over the status of farm schools, is a further barrier to obtaining assistance. Often the intervention of an intermediary, such as an NGO worker, is necessary to gain entry to the system. Lack of education also means that farm residents are often unaware or only vaguely aware of their rights under South African law. Farm owners, on the other hand, almost universally own private cars, or at worst have easy access to others who would offer transportation; are comfortable demanding a response from the relevant authorities; have the literacy skills to fill out statements or take action if there is no follow-up response to their complaint; and are kept up-to-date about their rights under the law through newsletters and magazines distributed by the agricultural unions.
The ANC-led government in office since 1994 has made significant efforts to overcome the inheritance of the past as it affects commercial farming areas. New laws provide legal protections giving a measure of security of tenure to farm residents, and accord farmworkers the full range of labor rights available to other South Africans (themselves extended). But despite these legal strides, implementation of and accessibility to the rights they protect remains very difficult for farm residents in the face of the realities of farm life. Meanwhile, many farm owners feel that the labor market has become over-regulated, and do not see why, in a business context, farm residents who are not working for them should have any security of tenure or other rights to the land. Forcible eviction of farm residents continues, despite the law, while farmers have cut the number of permanently employed farmworkers and increased the use of seasonal and migrant workers, more easily exploitable groups, as a proportion of the workforce.
The consequence of the combined effect of racial and gender discrimination within the South African criminal justice system is that both male and female black farm residents are disadvantaged by comparison with white farm owners in obtaining a response to their complaints of abuse. At the same time, the additional economic resources that white farm owners have enables them to organize to compensate for the deficiencies of the criminal justice system in responding to violent crime. While some such efforts make a useful contribution to rural security, in too many cases these self-help mechanisms have become little more than vigilante groups acting on behalf of white interests only, despite the race-neutral language used to describe their activities. Though violent crime against farm owners is a serious and relatively new phenomenon, deserving of an effective state response, it should not dominate discussion of policing priorities in farming areas to the exclusion of other forms of violent crime.
By failing to ensure that police and court officials investigate, prosecute, and punish perpetrators of murder, rape and other physical assaults against black South Africans on equal terms with whites, women on equal terms with men, foreign migrants on equal terms with citizens, South Africa fails to comply with its international law obligations to provide equal protection to all under the law. The South African government is also obliged to ensure that black people and women of all races do not suffer race and gender-based discrimination in the workplace and to remedy such discrimination whenever and wherever it occurs. (727) Assuring nondiscrimination entails, at a minimum, promulgating and enforcing legislation that prohibits such discrimination. South Africa has made great progress in accomplishing this goal. But passing legislation is not enough. The laws must be enforced. Firm steps must be taken to ensure that all South Africans, regardless of race or gender, are protected from violence and other abuse.