SOUTH Africa’s President Cyril Ramaphosa has called for calm, rejecting claims by pressure groups representing the country’s white minority that a spike in deadly attacks on farms was ‘ethnic cleansing’.
His appeal on Monday came after a group of mainly white farmers stormed a courthouse on Wednesday during the hearing of two black suspects accused of killing a 22-year-old farm manager.
The lead instigator of the rioters, Andre Pienaar, 52, was subsequently jailed and charged with terrorism on Friday.
Ramaphosa, in his weekly newsletter to the nation, strongly refuted claims that farm attacks were racially motivated.
He instead characterised the attacks as a sad reminder that the country was still recovering from its dark past under the apartheid regime, which ended in the early 1990s.
‘We would be naive to assume that race relations in farming communities have been harmonious since the advent of democracy,’ Ramaphosa wrote.
‘Unless this is
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