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Farmers live under siege as crime surges
A 4-meter-high steel gate, topped with spikes and flanked by security cameras, groans open as Marthinus steers his pickup onto his Free State farm. Barbed wire coils around the perimeter. The gate slams shut behind him with a metallic clang.
"It feels like a prison," he says. "If they want to kill us, they will. At least this buys me time."
The 38-year-old Afrikaner farmer, who asked that his full name not be used, manages the land with his wife and two young daughters. His grandfather and his wife's grandfather were both killed in separate farm attacks. He lives two hours from where 21-year-old farm manager Brendan Horner was found five years ago-tied to a post, a noose around his neck.
US refugee applications surge
In February, Marthinus applied for refugee status in the United States. "I'll give up everything so my family can be safe," he says. "No one should live like this."
Thousands of Afrikaners-descendants of Dutch and German settlers-have begun the same process since President Donald Trump signed an executive order prioritizing their resettlement. The exact number remains undisclosed, though the US reduced its annual refugee intake from 125,000 to 7,500 in October.
A White House document published in the Federal Register stated that admissions would "primarily" include Afrikaner South Africans and "other victims of illegal or unjust discrimination."
Violence cuts across racial lines
South Africa's crime epidemic spares no group. The latest police data, released in November, recorded 63 murders daily in the first quarter of 2025-a slight decline from 2024 but still among the world's highest rates.
Black farmers face the same threats. Thabo Makopo, 45, tends sheep and cattle on 237 acres near Ficksburg. "They're armed and dangerous," he says of the gangs targeting livestock. "It could happen to any of us."
Morgan Barrett, a sixth-generation white farmer, patrols his 2,000-acre property nightly with neighbors. Six of his cattle were stolen last week. "The police might show up in two or three hours," he says. "By then, the thieves are gone."
Barrett rejects claims of a "white genocide." "If they think a black farmer has 20,000 rand in his safe, they'll attack him just as fast," he says. "This isn't about race-it's about crime."
Debating persecution and land reform
Trump and Elon Musk have amplified disputed claims of a targeted campaign against white farmers. The South African government denies systemic persecution, citing police data: of 18 farm murders between October 2024 and March 2025, 16 victims were Black.
Yet racial tensions persist. Under apartheid (1948-1994), the white-minority government enforced segregation, stripping Black citizens of land, voting rights, and skilled jobs. Today, white South Africans-7.3% of the population-own 72% of private farmland, per a 2017 government audit.
A new law allows expropriation of land without compensation in rare cases, but legal experts say it won't significantly alter ownership patterns.
Everyday violence in townships
In Meqheleng, a township near Ficksburg, Nthabiseng Nthathakana mourns her husband, Thembani Ncgango, killed during a January robbery. "He had bullets everywhere-stab wounds, rocks," she says. No arrests have been made. Now a single mother of four, she struggles to answer her children's questions: "Who killed Dad?"
Two hours away, Marthinus and his family celebrate their approved US refugee status. "I'm grateful to escape this fear," he says. "People want to erase us-to take our land."
"Our Afrikaner people are an endangered species."
Marthinus, Free State farmer
