Jacob Zuma |
Parliament is expected to hold a debate on farm attacks and murders, the FF Plus said on Wednesday.
National Assembly
Speaker Baleka Mbete had reversed her recent decision not to allow a
debate on the matter, FF Plus leader Pieter Groenewald said. The debate, to be held next Tuesday, followed discussions with Mbete last week.
"The FF Plus
welcomes that the ANC government has, after thousands of murders and
attacks, eventually acknowledged that this issue is of great importance
which should be debated."
Groenewald said
they had told Mbete that the attacks didn't only affect whites, but had
serious consequences for food security, economic development, and the
stability of the labour market.
He claimed that 133
farmers out of every 100 000 in the population were murdered, and that
there had been an increase in farm attacks in February.
Confirmed figures
on farm attacks are hard to come by. Rights group AfriForum gathered
statistics based on news reports and accounts forwarded to its research
desk.
In a previous
attempt at establishing a fuller picture of attacks, an AfriForum
researcher explained that, because updated crime statistics were not
available, they relied on newspaper reports for their statistics.
Other
victims, such as labourers assaulted to gain access to a farm, were
often overlooked in reports and so were not accounted for in their
research."The murders and attacks are a tragedy," Groenewald said.
"The FF Plus,
therefore, welcomes this historical debate. It is of the greatest
importance that the public of South Africa knows what political parties
do about issues that affect everybody in the country."
No comments:
Post a Comment