How have murder rates on South African farms changed by race from 2016 to 2025?
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Executive summary
Official, reliable time‑series data disaggregating farm murders by race do not exist for most of the period 2016–2025, so definitive statements about changing “murder rates on South African farms by race” are not possible; the South African Police Service historically merged farm murders into national homicide figures and did not publish race breakdowns until a one‑off disclosure by Police Minister Senzo Mchunu in 2025 covering a recent quarter [1] [2] [3]. Independent compilations and advocacy groups put typical farm murders at roughly 50–70 a year in the mid‑2010s, but these sources use differing definitions and selection methods and cannot reliably convert counts into race‑specific rates over time [1] [4] [5].
1. Official records: long gaps and a late, limited race snapshot
The South African Police Service stopped publishing a distinct farm‑murder series after 2007 and generally does not categorise farm homicides by race, which obstructs longitudinal race‑by‑race trend analysis from 2016 to 2025; Minister Mchunu’s 2025 disclosure that five of six farm murder victims in one recent quarter were Black and one was White is an atypical, ad hoc breakdown produced in response to political claims, not a restoration of a consistent historical dataset [1] [2] [3].
2. What counts as a “farm murder” matters for comparisons
Different trackers count different events: police operational databases, the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU/TAU SA), civil‑society fact‑checks and media studies vary in whether they include owners, workers, family members, visitors, and what they label “farm attacks,” so annual totals cited for the mid‑2010s—roughly 58–74 farm murders in 2015–2017 or about 50 per year in other series—cannot be directly translated into race‑specific murder rates without knowing denominator populations and consistent inclusion rules [1] [6] [4] [5].
3. Independent analysis contradicts the “systematic racial targeting” narrative
Researchers at the Institute for Security Studies and other analysts argue that farm violence is chiefly shaped by location, poverty and opportunistic crime rather than an organised racial campaign; ISS reporting notes that national murder patterns are more strongly correlated with class, gender and precincts—many concentrated in predominantly Black townships—than with a racially targeted campaign against White farmers [7] [8]. Fact‑checking outlets and the South African government have repeatedly pushed back on claims of a “white genocide,” pointing to selective media coverage and faulty extrapolations from incomplete datasets [9] [3].
4. What the data do show, cautiously, for 2016–2025
Available public summaries indicate that absolute counts of farm murders have fluctuated—mid‑2010s counts around 50–70 a year and occasional quarterly drops or rises into the early 2020s—and that, when ad hoc race information is available, victims include both Black and White people in ownership and labour roles; however, no consistent, nation‑wide series of race‑disaggregated farm‑murder rates spanning 2016–2025 exists in the public record to demonstrate clear, long‑term increases or decreases by race [1] [6] [4] [5] [2].
5. Criminal‑justice context and prosecution patterns that shape interpretation
Low detection and conviction rates for murder generally—and for farm murders specifically in some NGO datasets—complicate any trend reading: studies cited by ISS and others show poor national detection and low conviction rates that vary by type of case, and an AfriForum tally found only 18% of farm‑attack cases resulted in conviction in one multi‑year window; those enforcement gaps affect whether counts reflect underlying violence or investigative capacity [7].
6. Conclusion: a constrained verdict and the politics around it
The constrained, evidence‑based conclusion is that race‑specific murder rates on South African farms from 2016–2025 cannot be robustly charted because of inconsistent definitions, merged police reporting and the lack of sustained race disaggregation; isolated disclosures—such as the 2025 quarter that showed more Black than White victims—demonstrate that farm murders affect people of multiple races but do not prove a countrywide trend of racially targeted killings [2] [3] [1]. Where claims of “white genocide” have been made, multiple fact‑checks and academic commentators find those claims unsupported by the available data and often amplified for political ends [9] [7] [8].