Setting the record straight on South Africa's farm murder rate

At Africa Check, the continent's first independent fact-checking website that I'm editor of (yes, I'm punting it!), a staple of our work involves researching claims that the farming community, and white people in general, are targeted disproportionately when it comes to crime.

It is an emotive topic because of the brutality and torture that farm murders often involve. Because of racial undertones, right-wing commentators in the US and Europe like to enter the fray.

To be sure, South Africa is a violent place to live in. Based on the most recent crime statistics, the country's murder rate is a high 34 per 100,000 people. In a recent parliamentary debate, this was compared to the murder rate on farmers, with two politicians claiming it was 133 and 97 per 100,000, respectively.

But whereas it is relatively simple to work out a general murder rate (the number of murders expressed per 100,000 of a country's people), our senior researcher established it is near impossible to do so for farm murders in South Africa.

The first reason has to do with the police's definition of a farm murder. Victims include anyone “residing on, working on or visiting farms and smallholdings” -  not only farmers and their families.

While the police recorded 46 murders on farms and smallholdings between April and December 2016, it is tricky to determine exactly how many people work on, live on or visit farms and smallholdings.

A 2007 census of commercial agriculture found there were 818,503 people involved in commercial farming activities at the time, including 32,375 full-time farmers and 770,933 paid employees. Using this figure gives a farm murder rate of 5.6 murders per 100,000, but the country's most recent community survey estimated that up to 11 million lived in households involved in agriculture.

This report again shows that the topic of farm murders in South Africa is more complex than most commentators are revealing.