White South African farmers and rival black protesters yesterday demonstrated in the central town of Senekal over a murder case that has reignited racial tensions still simmering 26 years after the end of apartheid.
The killing of Brendan Horner, a white man whose body was found tied to a pole at his farm in Free State Province, sparked riots at the start of this month, which prompted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa to make a statement urging South Africans to “resist attempts... to mobilize communities along racial lines.”
The farmers, who accuse the government of failing to protect them from violent crime, started arriving in pickup trucks ahead of a court hearing in Senekal for Horner’s two suspected killers. The farmers mostly wore khaki shirts and shorts, and a few wore military outfits.
Photo: EPA-EFE
“We are getting tired now of all the farm murders,” said Geoffrey Marais, 30, a livestock trader from Delmas, where a woman was strangled to death two weeks ago.
“Enough is enough. [The government] must start to prioritize these crimes,” he said.
The radical Economic Freedom Fighters (EFF), who represent poor black South Africans who feel left out of the country’s post-apartheid prosperity, staged a counter-march attended by thousands of protesters.
They work the group’s trademark red shirts and berets in the town center.
Police separated the two groups with razor wire in one street, but they regrouped and faced off in another area as police helicopters hovered overhead.
Despite the tensions, there were no reports of violence.
The EFF blames South Africa’s problems on what it says is a continued stranglehold of the economy by whites.
Several buses full of EFF supporters drove past the farmers singing “kill the boer [farmer]” out of the window as they headed into town.
“We are not scared of them. We are going to get them on Friday. We are going to face white men face to face,” the EFF’s firebrand leader Julius Malema was quoted as saying in the local press this week.
“I’m here because of white people... taking advantage of us,” said EFF supporter Khaya Langile, who came from the Johannesburg township of Soweto.
Tensions have been heightened by a government plan to expropriate white-owned land without compensation as part of an effort to redress economic inequalities that remain stark a quarter of a century after the end of apartheid.
About 70 percent of privately owned farmland in South Africa is owned by whites, who make up less than 9 percent of the country’s population of 58 million.
Kehinde Sanni spends his days smoothing out dents and repainting scratched bumpers in a modest autobody shop in Lagos. He has never left Nigeria, yet he speaks glowingly of Burkina Faso military leader Ibrahim Traore. “Nigeria needs someone like Ibrahim Traore of Burkina Faso. He is doing well for his country,” Sanni said. His admiration is shaped by a steady stream of viral videos, memes and social media posts — many misleading or outright false — portraying Traore as a fearless reformer who defied Western powers and reclaimed his country’s dignity. The Burkinabe strongman swept into power following a coup in September 2022
‘FRAGMENTING’: British politics have for a long time been dominated by the Labor Party and the Tories, but polls suggest that Reform now poses a significant challenge Hard-right upstarts Reform UK snatched a parliamentary seat from British Prime Minister Keir Starmer’s Labor Party yesterday in local elections that dealt a blow to the UK’s two establishment parties. Reform, led by anti-immigrant firebrand Nigel Farage, won the by-election in Runcorn and Helsby in northwest England by just six votes, as it picked up gains in other localities, including one mayoralty. The group’s strong showing continues momentum it built up at last year’s general election and appears to confirm a trend that the UK is entering an era of multi-party politics. “For the movement, for the party it’s a very, very big
ENTERTAINMENT: Rio officials have a history of organizing massive concerts on Copacabana Beach, with Madonna’s show drawing about 1.6 million fans last year Lady Gaga on Saturday night gave a free concert in front of 2 million fans who poured onto Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro for the biggest show of her career. “Tonight, we’re making history... Thank you for making history with me,” Lady Gaga told a screaming crowd. The Mother Monster, as she is known, started the show at about 10:10pm local time with her 2011 song Bloody Mary. Cries of joy rose from the tightly packed fans who sang and danced shoulder-to-shoulder on the vast stretch of sand. Concert organizers said 2.1 million people attended the show. Lady Gaga
SUPPORT: The Australian prime minister promised to back Kyiv against Russia’s invasion, saying: ‘That’s my government’s position. It was yesterday. It still is’ Left-leaning Australian Prime Minister Anthony Albanese yesterday basked in his landslide election win, promising a “disciplined, orderly” government to confront cost-of-living pain and tariff turmoil. People clapped as the 62-year-old and his fiancee, Jodie Haydon, who visited his old inner Sydney haunt, Cafe Italia, surrounded by a crowd of jostling photographers and journalists. Albanese’s Labor Party is on course to win at least 83 seats in the 150-member parliament, partial results showed. Opposition leader Peter Dutton’s conservative Liberal-National coalition had just 38 seats, and other parties 12. Another 17 seats were still in doubt. “We will be a disciplined, orderly