WATCHING last nights Piers Morgan segment featuring Ernst Roets, Gareth Cliff, Dan Corder and Sophie Mokoena, was astonishing. Not only did Mokoena repeatedly interject, displaying to the world that she is little more than a propaganda commissar for the SABC, but like Dan Corder, she refused to accept any facts when they arrived. Morgan, was forced to call Mokoena to order when she falsely claimed on air ‘not one farm attack has been politically motivated’.

Corder on his part, dismissed a well-known TRC finding that the “Kill the Boer” slogan  had motivated hate crime, (not current enough), before resorting to his own show as an authority on the subject of contemporary South African crime stats. Corder’s sources appear to be none other than our government, and his arguments mocking Roets for not complaining about ‘abelism’ were indeed facile.

The trouble with government statistics, was first noted by Human Rights Watch which complained about the manner in which South African stats are all lumped into single categories,: “The statistics for “attacks on farms and smallholdings” are problematic for a number of reasons… in practice racial issues dominate the way the statistics are collected .. police stations are asked to note “attacks” on a non-racial basis.”  In essence, public policy may dictate that hate crimes are simply swept under the carpet in the rush to present our nation as a country where ”citizens experience crime equally”.

Locating independent verification of the forensic data here is problematic given the terrain, with the statistics obviously contested by persons such as Ernst Roets and Afriforum, our government is quick to release data, purporting to refute claims of under-reporting. To date, no independent audit of the numbers, is available, crimes which by their nature are difficult to categorize and verify. Yes, the issues cuts both ways, how does one deal with hate crimes against farm workers? Lumping all politically-motivated crime into one heap that includes ordinary homicide, aggravated assault etc, makes absolutely no sense.

Statements like “South Africa does not experience hate crime” should be taken with a pinch of salt, there is a good deal of scepticism in my mind, given the reports and manner in which issues concerning minorities are being dealt with by my country. This week President Ramaphosa announced that the country would continue to deploy race labels, whilst engaging in ‘positive discrimination’, so when it comes to crime, it’s all about non-racialism, but where business is concerned, we will roll out those labels?

Please read my earlier piece on why issues such as magnitude and scale are relatively unimportant when it comes to interdicting the ‘crime of genocide’.