South Africa, “farm attacks”, and deadly language games (op-ed)
President Donald Trump’s latest controversial tweet
was about two issues in South Africa, Land reform and murdered farmers. Trump’s tweet contained two parts, a request
and a reference.
The
request: The president asked the secretary of state to closely study the South
Africa land and farm seizures and expropriations and the large scale killing of
farmers.
This
inquiry was prompted by the reference.
Trump
cited: “South African government is now seizing land from white farmers.”
@Tucker Carlson @Fox News.
South
Africa’s government immediately issued a rebuttal.
But
it hasn’t happened yet.
According
to Newsweek (3/19/18 under this headline: A white farmer is killed every five
days in South Africa and authorities do nothing about it, activists say) this
land policy was proposed by the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters, Julius
Malema, who believes redistribution of land can correct historical
injustices. In 2016 ENCA (eNews Channel
Africa) reported that Malema told his supporters, “We are not calling for the
slaughter of white people, at least for now.”
(The A.N.C. does not condone or endorse this rhetoric.) The New York Times also said, “The number of
killings of farmers, including farm workers, is at a 20-year-low … The national
murder rate last year was 34.1 per 100,000 people, but the number of people
living on farms is not fully known, which makes comparisons difficult.
Most official statistics do not break down homicides by race. There is no official crime category called ‘farm attack’ or ‘farm murder’. Some white South African’s say they believe that the farm killings are underreported, politically motivated and part of a conspiracy to rid the country of white residents. But a senior researcher at Africa Check said, “Nobody is disputing that people living and working on farms and small holdings are victims of violent and often brutal attacks and murders. What’s disputed is whether they face elevated risks versus average South Africans.”
Now,
after the secretary of state studied the matter closely, he would have told the
president the situation was confusing but the information he received was
inaccurate. There’s no land
redistribution yet and no large scale killing now. (This is literally politically correct.)
The
controversy wasn’t the President’s request.
It was the reference and how the material was prefaced. Tucker Carlson opened, “South Africa’s
president began the process of seizing land from his citizens, without
compensation, because they are the wrong skin color. This is literally the definition of racism.” Then Carlson stated, racism is what our “elites”
say they dislike most but they paid no attention to this at all.
Here,
Carlson, either called the “elites” cowards because they refuse to criticize a
black government out of fear of being called racist, or he’s claiming their
silence is the insidious bigotry of low expectation. Either way, the zeal to fact-check Carson
wasn’t to inform the public it was to discredit the insult. This was done by labeling every source or
outlet that mentioned “Land seizures" and "white farmers attacked” as
right-wing or white supremist.
That’s fine, I understand fighting fire with fire, but it went too far when headlines read: The president is spreading myths of global white genocide, because Julius Malema and his Economic Freedom Fighters expressed the same sentiment. This is a deadly language game. You never put “myth” beside “genocide” when the only preventive measure begins with its official declaration.
First published in the
New Pittsburgh Courier 8/29/18
Comments
Post a Comment