Farm Murders

AfriForum, an Afrikaner civil-rights organisation, keeps the most widely cited independent tracker. Its 2025 report recorded at least 184 farm attacks and 29 farm murders, against 176 attacks and 37 murders in 2024. It classified 36% of the 2025 attacks as serious violent acts with a substantial risk of death.

By province, Gauteng had the most attacks (50) and murder incidents (7) in 2025. Limpopo had the highest ratio of murder incidents to attacks: 5 in 16.

In April 2026 AfriForum published a further report documenting torture in 47 farm attacks.

SAPS stopped reporting farm attacks in its annual reports after 2006/07, but its quarterly crime statistics now include farm murders. For April–June 2026 SAPS recorded one farm murder, in Gauteng, and four attempted murders on farms — against six farm killings in the same quarter of 2025.

For January–March 2025 SAPS recorded six farm murders: two farm owners, two farm employees, a farm manager and a farm dweller. Then-Police Minister Senzo Mchunu said five of the six victims were African and one, the farm dweller, was white. SAPS does not routinely publish victims' race.

SAPS and AfriForum count differently and their figures regularly diverge. In March 2025 AfriForum gave the minister details of eight farm murders it said were missing from the official statistics, and SAPS said it would look into them.

The Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU SA) has kept a running count since 1990. Its 2019 tally was 2,022 members of the farming community murdered since 1990. An earlier version of this page gave a figure of 2,229 since 1994; no source for it could be found.

The government's Committee of Inquiry into Farm Attacks reported in 2003 that 89.3% of attacks were primarily criminal, for the purposes of robbery, and that it found no evidence of political motives. Money was stolen in most attacks, firearms in 23% and vehicles in 16%. An earlier version of this page attributed findings to a "Marais Commission"; no such commission exists.

The claim of a "white genocide" is not supported by that inquiry or by SAPS's victim data, which include many Black victims. AfriForum, for its part, argues that the level of violence and torture in attacks justifies treating them as a priority crime.

In 2003 President Thabo Mbeki announced the closure of the commandos — the SANDF's volunteer territorial units that were a cornerstone of rural protection — without prior consultation. SAPS was to replace them with police reservists, crime-combating units and sector policing. A Rural Safety Strategy was adopted in 2011, aimed at rural security generally rather than farms specifically.