The government of Australia is offering to fast track visas for white South African farmers who are under siege on their own land.

It's a story that's not getting much play in the US - for obvious reasons. A group representing Afrikaners, the white minority claims that 82 white farmers were murdered just last year with 432 incidents of violence. The government is challenging those numbers and even whites admit that white farmers are not the only victims of violent crime in rural areas.

But at least some white farmers are living in fear and they are blaming the bill passed by parliament last month that will allow the government to sieze white owned land without compensation. Many white farmers are choosing to leave and Australia is trying to expedite "humanitarian" visas.

This has outraged the government who claim things are not as bad for white South African farmers as is being portrayed.

Guardian:

South Africa has criticised Australian home affairs minister Peter Dutton’s offer to fast-track the visas of its white African farmers, saying his comments on the supposed threat to their lives and land were “sad” and “regrettable”.

A spokesperson for international relations minister Lindiwe Sisulu, said: “There is no need to fear … we want to say to the world that we are engaged in a process of land redistribution which is very important to address the imbalances of the past. But it is going to be done legally, and with due consideration of the economic impact and impact on individuals.”

On Wednesday, Dutton said white farmers deserved “special attention” due to the “horrific circumstances” of land seizures and violence. It follows recent reports in Australian media of “numerous and increasing cases of rape and torture carried out on white farmers” and “a white minority in South Africa being murdered and tortured off their farms.

However, Gareth Newham at the Institute for Security Studies, one of South Africa’s leading authorities on crime statistics, said there was no evidence to support the notion that white farmers were targeted more than anyone else in the country.

“In fact, young black males living in poor urban areas like Khayelitsha and Lange face a far greater risk of being murdered. The murder rate there is between 200 and 300 murders per 100,000 people,” he said. Even the highest estimates of farm murders stand at 133 per 100,000 people, and that includes both black and white murder victims.

Estimates of the rate of white farm murders are fiercely contested. “It’s a difficult question to answer because we don’t really know exactly how many white South Africa farmers there are,” said Newham.

The whole nation is descending into chaos with Cape Town literally running out of water and urban areas suffering from extreme levels of violence. But with the government getting ready to sieze land that's been owned by the same families for hundreds of years, the sense that white farmers are targets is impossible to ignore.

However, for South Africans who have lived through the violence or know people who have, Mr Dutton’s comments aren’t completely incorrect.

One woman living in South Africa, who didn’t want to be named out of fear of reprisals, told news.com.au she and her family were living in a constant state of fear.

The retiree said crime wasn’t limited just to white people or farming communities but accused the government of not doing enough to protect all South Africans.

“We are living in fear and are reluctant to go out at night and even during the day,” she told news.com.au.

“So basically you are housebound most of the time. This is a terrible way to live.”

She said it wasn’t just white people who were suffering with many black people also falling victim to crime.

“In South Africa black people kill each other for as little as a cell phone or a few Rand,” she said. “Your car cannot be parked on your driveway outside your home as the theft of the car takes place in minutes.”

She said most white owned homes have barbed wire, alarm systems and burglar bars while car-jackings were a part of life.

Jobs for white people were also becoming harder to obtain, she said, with affirmative action favouring black people — a point she didn’t necessarily disagree with.

However, she pointed out many would leave the country taking expertise in areas such as farming with them.

The woman also said she was devastated at the crime taking place and especially at the violence being perpetrated against white farmers, which she believed had worsened under the current government.

The government is promising the land grab will be done peacefully. They claim there will be no repeat of what happened in neighboring Rhodesia in 1980, now Zimbabwe, where an orgy of murders took place against white farmers there. 

When apartheid ended in 1994, provisions were made to protect white farmers from the exact program the government has now enacted. In fact, in order to sieze the land without compensation, they must change their constitution.

But radical black South Africans now appear to be running the country. And the worst fears of white farmers are being realized.

Thomas Lifson adds:

I thank God that Australia will offer shelter to these farmers. If it were up to America to supply refuge, you could count on leftists demanding "extreme vetting" while they were slaughtered. Nearly all of them are skilled and successful farmers who would be an asset to any country with agricultural land needing cultivation.

I have little doubt that there are those on the American left who would celebrate their ethnic cleansing.