S Africa white farmers’ murder rate double that of blacks

THE mainstream media have dismissed the hypothesis of a ‘genocide’ against white farmers in South Africa as a conspiracy theory, but they are using the wrong data. When the correct data are used there is statistically significant evidence that white farmers are currently at least three times more likely to be murdered than black farmers. Moreover, the recent annual murder rate of white farmers is more than double the overall annual murder rate for South Africa. Whether or not this constitutes a ‘genocide’ is an open question.

In rubbishing the genocide claim, the MSM have claimed (correctly) that 

• blacks are far more likely to be murder victims generally;  
• the proportion of farmers among the murdered is small; 
• there are far more white farmers than black farmers.

For example, Reuters ‘fact check’ asserts:

• South Africa has one of the world’s highest murder rates, with an average of 72 a day in a country of 60million people. Most victims are black;
• South African police recorded 26,232 murders nationwide in 2024, of which 44 were linked to farming communities. Of those, eight of the victims were farmers;
• Data collected by white farmers themselves does not support the notion of a genocide. The Afrikaner farmers’ union TLU-SA has counted 1,363 white farmers murdered since 1990, or an average of 40 a year – far less than 1 per cent of total murders.

However, while these data are correct (although the 2024 data appear incomplete), they fail to address the genocide hypothesis. In fact, in statistical terms they fail to address the more basic hypothesis that: ‘White farmers are significantly more likely to be murdered than black farmers.’

Or even the hypothesis that: ‘White farmers are significantly more likely to be murdered than a random person in South Africa.’

Before focusing on the former basic hypothesis, it is important to note that, simply by adding the total number of white farmers to their own ‘fact checking’ data, there is very strong evidence to support this latter hypothesis. This is because the 2024 annual South Africa murder rate was 1 in 2,287 based on 26,232 murders recorded in the population of 60million. This compares with the current annual murder rate of 1 in 950 for white farmers based on an average 40 murders a year among a population of approximately 38,000 white farmers. In other words, the white farmer murder rate is more than double that national murder rate. Normally, we would expect the national murder rate to be much higher since murders occur disproportionally in cities and townships where gangs operate rather in protected/secluded communities like farms.

The basic data we need to test the former basic hypothesis are, for each recent year: 

• The respective total numbers of black farmers and white farmers;
• The respective numbers of murders of black farmers and white farmers.

Although there are no precise reliable sources for these data, there are a range of estimates according to AI sources (primarily ChatGPT and Grok). For example:

For the number of black and white farmers, there were, as of 2024:

• between 28,800 to 35,000 black farmers. The number has been steadily increasing since 1986 when there were only approximately 4,000;
• between 32,000 and 44,000 white farmers. The number has been steadily decreasing since 1986 where there were more than 100,000.

For the number of murders of black and white farmers, according to data from the Transvaal Agricultural Union of South Africa (TAU SA), from 1990 to 2024 a total of 2,295 people were murdered in farm attacks:

• 1,363 white farmers and 529 relatives of white farmers;
• 88 black farmers and 61 relatives of black farmers, along with 188 black workers and 7 black visitors.

There are no complete definitive sources of data for each year and, even where there are, there are wide variations around the numbers presented. Also, many claim that there are missing black deaths from the TAU data.

For this analysis I have extrapolated (in Table 1) estimates for the individual years between 2017 and 2024 as the data for these are the most reliable and relevant to test the hypothesis. I have allowed both for the wide variation and the possible underestimate of murdered black farmers (for example, in 2017 when the TAU identified 2 such murders, I have allowed the range 2-5) and also allowed for a much wider range of uncertainty about the number of black farmers than white farmers as the data for the former are considered to be less reliable. I have added the year 1990 as a baseline comparison.

Table 1

*This is simply the mean number of murdered farmers divided by the mean number of farmers in each category. 

The murder rates in Table 1 should be treated with great caution as they are based only on the mean numbers and so do not take any account of the great underlying uncertainty and cannot be used to test the hypothesis. Before I handle that uncertainty and test the hypothesis with a proper Bayesian analysis, it is worth noting the overall trend. Specifically, while there appears to have been no great difference in white and black murder rates in 1990, the murder rates for whites do appear to be much higher in recent years than for blacks. The question is, given the underlying uncertainty of the data, are the differences statistically significant?

To give an indication of the level of uncertainty we get with limited data, based on the 1990 data alone, using a Bayesian analysis we get the results for the murder rates shown in Table 2:

Table 2: 1990

There is no statistically significant difference between these. All we could deduce is that there is about a 35% probability that the true murder rate of whites is higher than that of blacks, or equivalently about a 65% probability that the true murder rate of blacks is higher than that of whites.

So, based on the 1990 data alone, there is certainly no evidence to support the ‘genocide’ hypothesis. However, the genocide hypothesis is only claimed for ‘recent years’.  We can look at the individual evidence for each of the years 2017 to 2022 and then at the combined evidence for these years. Consider first 2017 as shown in Table 3

Table 3: 2017

In this case, even with the uncertainty of the data, note that the confidence intervals do not overlap. In this case we can deduce that there is a 99.945% probability that the true murder rate of whites is higher than that of blacks. This is statistically highly significant.

The results for years 2018 to 2022 are shown in Tables 4-8

Table 4: 2018

Table 5: 2019

Table 6: 2020

Table 7: 2021

Table 8: 2022

Note that in each of these years the probability that the true murder rate of whites is higher than blacks is at least 97.59% but only years 2017 and 2018 pass the 99% threshold.

However, when we do the Bayesian analysis over the entire period 2017-2022 we get the results shown in Table 9.

Table 9: 2017-2022 Aggregated data

So, over the entire period it is essentially certain (99.98% probability) that the true murder rate of whites is at least twice that of black and highly likely (96.95% probability) to be at least three times as high.

Note also that the median value of 1 in 1,082 can be treated as an accurate annual murder rate for white farmers to compare with the latest annual murder rate of 1 in 2,287 for South Africa as a whole. This confirms that white farmers are more than twice as likely to be murdered than an ‘average’ South African. This is an alarming observation given that the national rate is one of the highest in the world.

Summary

Although the hypothesis of a recent genocide against white South African farmers is difficult to define, it cannot be dismissed based on the data used by the mainstream media to do so. We have shown that, in a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world, white farmers are currently more than twice as likely to be murdered as an ‘average’ South African. We have also shown an alarming difference in the recent rate of murders of black and white farmers – a difference which was not evident in 1990. When the approximate data for the years 2017-2022 is aggregated and full account is taken of the very wide uncertainty of the data using a Bayesian analysis, it is almost certain (99.98% probability) that the murder rate of whites is at least twice as high as that for blacks, and highly likely (96.95% probability) to be at least three times as high. While these figures do not ‘prove’ that there is a genocide against white farmers they do provide undeniable evidence that in recent years white farmers are more likely to be murdered.