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Comment by lcvw | Hacker News Reader

According to Wikipedia 54-74 white farmers have been killed in South Africa in the past 5 years. Compared to the annual murder rate of 20,000 per year that seems negligible. How is this comparable to apartheid at all? Also I would hardly call 10 people being killed a year en mass. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/South_African_farm_attacks?wpr...

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The linked article quotes 54-74 white farmer murders _annually_. Even at two white farmers per farm in South Africa that implies a murder rate at least 2x above the national average with large enough total counts to be significant.

I'd also wager a guess that most South African farmers are not white (they own 70% of farm land mass, but with no real evidence I'd imagine the farms are on average much larger than what was left for the locals), which would push that 2x stat much higher.

Edit: On the other hand, I do think it would be interesting to compare the rate to farms of similar sizes and different races, should that data exist somewhere. With murder rates 2-~20x above average I wouldn't be totally surprised if the common factor were just extra wealth or something.

>I'd also wager a guess that most South African farmers are not white

Given the demographics, not an unfair guess, albeit a lazy one. No, not even close.

Land reform is a controversial topic in my country so I'm just going to TL;DR the past 5 decades and provide some links[0][1] that you are going to have to be very sceptical about (given the controversial nature of the debate).

- We have one of, if not the, highest wealth gaps in the world as a direct result of Apartheid

- Unsurprisingly, land ownership is rare

- Ergo, most of the land is owned by the wealthy class, who are the white minority.

- I am not offering an opinion on the racial aspect here, violent crime affects all South Africans equally

[0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Land_reform_in_South_Africa

[1]: https://www.gov.za/sites/default/files/gcis_document/201802/...

You are somewhat correct. Official statistics on murders broken down by race and land ownership are difficult to find so it makes having a conversation on the topic difficult. The statistics that are available on white farm murders indicate that their murder rate is within the average for for rural/farm areas. Infact the murder rate of black men in rural areas is even higher then white farmers.

Here are additional sources if you or anyone else would like to know more on the topic;

https://africacheck.org/fact-checks/factsheets/factsheet-sta...

https://africacheck.org/fact-checks/reports/are-sa-whites-re...

https://africacheck.org/fact-checks/spotchecks/claims-about-...

https://africacheck.org/fact-checks/blog/analysis-why-calcul...

For comparison, over a period of 86 years in the US, 4,743 people were lynched (1,297 white, 3,446 black). About 55 per year.

http://law2.umkc.edu/faculty/projects/ftrials/shipp/lynching...

So if I'm getting it correctly, that's roughly 0.44 deaths per 1M capita per year in the US, and 1.1 comparable deaths per 1M capita per year in South Africa? Well, then it seems at least comparable to US lynchings, if not slightly higher. (Your link sadly doesn't provide distribution in time so I have to calculate with average population in that period.)

These lynchings were really grisly. People would gather around, they would carve up the body and take organs as trinkets. There were also mass attacks on black people, like in Tuscon.

Here in South Africa we do have lots of violent killings, but white farmers aren't killed at a greater than national average level. In fact the highest murder rate is among cape coloureds in the cape flats.

This is clearly false, the above comment or clearly demonstrated a far above average death rate of vulnerable minorities in SA

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