Reported figures for farm attacks in South Africa presented as representing a single province
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on June 12, 2019 at 10:10
- 2 min read
- By AFP South Africa, Tendai DUBE
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The Facebook post, which we’ve archived here, has been shared more than 3,500 times and is captioned: “Shocking stats: Total of 184 farm attacks and 20 murders in the past five months in the Western Cape.”
The comments section includes many expressions of outrage. The post is on a page called News360 which is managed mainly from Nigeria, according to the Facebook Page Transparency Data:
The post links to an article on News360.co.za, which also includes the incorrect figures. The article is very similar to another on the Times Live website, also from June 7, which correctly presented the same figures from the report as representing the whole country.
The figures come from AfriForum, an Afrikaner rights group, which announced its latest farm attack statistics during a media conference on June 4. It gave the figure as 184 attacks and 20 murders for the first five months of the year in the whole of South Africa.
It showed 17 attacks (updated from 16 after the report was first released) and three murders in the Western Cape province during the same period.
The AfriForum report records the most farm attacks in Gauteng, at 51, 28 attacks in the North West province and 27 attacks in Limpopo.
The level of violence against farmers and farm workers is a hotly contested topic in South Africa that often makes international headlines -- see AFP’s report here about the backlash after US President Donald Trump tweeted about the issue.
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