Gun Ownership, Self-Defense and South African Farm Confiscation

"They were tortured with a blow torch and knives," a chilling Middleburg Observer report about a South African farm attack related. "A plastic bag was stuffed down Sue's throat and they attempted to strangle Robert with a black bag around his neck.

"They drove from the Mash Land farm through Belfast towards Stoffberg. In the pass Sue was shot in the head twice before her attackers dragged her into the field next to the road," the story elaborates. "A few metres further it was Robert's turn. His attackers aimed for his head, pulled the trigger and pushed him out of the vehicle."

"In any other country, such a crime would be almost unthinkable. But in South Africa, these kinds of farm attacks are happening nearly every day," Fox News observed in a follow-up report. "This year so far, there have been more than 70 attacks and around 25 murders in similar attacks on white farmers."

"Official statistics on farm attacks are non-existent, due to what human rights groups have described as a 'cover-up' by the notoriously corrupt - and potentially complicit - South African government," the report concluded, linking to another Middleburg Observer report:

 "'Bury them alive!': White South Africans fear for their future as horrific farm attacks escalate"

And defense of life and property for the population being targeted for their race is becoming increasingly problematic due to so-called "gun control."

A Labyrinth of "Regulations"

"The regulation of guns in South Africa is categorised as restrictive," GunPolicy.org notes. While the website, a project of the Sydney School of Public Health, is decidedly anti-gun, it nonetheless provides an accurate picture of gun laws from around the world (or at least it did until funding to keep it updated ran out).

"In South Africa, the right to private gun ownership is not guaranteed by law," Gun Policy notes. "[C]ivilians are not allowed to possess semi-automatic firearms without special endorsement, automatic firearms and specifically modified firearms [and] private possession of fully automatic weapons is prohibited."

In order for a license to be issued, an applicant (minimum age 21) must "establish a genuine reason to possess a firearm" and then "pass a background check which considers criminal, mental health, medical, domestic violence, addiction, employment, and previous firearm license records."

"[T]hird party character references for each gun license applicant are required," as is "firearm safety training," to include "an understanding of firearm safety and the law, tested in a theoretical and/or practical training course."

"A person may only possess one firearm for the purpose of [self-defense], a shotgun that is not fully or semi-automatic, or a handgun that is not fully automatic," the South African Police Service advises. "The license, which is issued in terms of this section, is valid for five years from the date of issue, unless it is cancelled or terminated."

Rifles and shotguns are also permitted, and there are even a "few exceptions" for "semi-automatic assault weapons," but the law is purposely difficult to navigate. That's because there are multiple licenses, including ones for self-defense, sports shooting, hunting, business purposes, collecting and others. Those licenses have varying renewal periods (from two to 10 years, depending), and per the Firearms Control Act, there are limits on the number of licenses issued to an individual. That means adding licenses requires "the number of licenses which [a] person may hold must be reduced by the number of such additional licenses held."

There are also ammunition restrictions. ("Licensed firearm owners in South Africa are permitted to possess up to 2,400 primers or 200 cartridges per firearm, for all those other than dedicated hunters or sports-shooters.")

Modern Sporting Rifles are available from the many gun shops, like Hailstorm or Spartan Arms International, provided the purchaser has the proper license which usually requires a gun club membership and regular trips to the range for target shooting events. This license is very restrictive and is for sport shooting only. Although there is a separate license to own these types of firearms for self-defense, they are very difficult to obtain and it appears that they can only be used in this capacity if you are in need of defending a farm from the kind of criminal attacks which are the subject of this article.

While openly carrying is prohibited, concealed carry is allowed without a permit, providing Firearms Control Act provisions for "carrying a firearm in a public place" rules are observed. That's no doubt in part because legal possession of a firearm in the first place requires establishing "genuine reason" for any of the license types.

Still, on the surface, that appears much more "liberal" than much of Western Europe and "progressive" areas of the United States. So what's the big deal?

Licensing and registration -- and lack of recognition as a right -- means what government gives, government can take away. And a government that can take away someone's home and land can take away anything.  Gun laws become the whim of the legislature backed by the majority, and it's those very laws - the ones criminals ignore (it is estimated there are anywhere between 500,000 to 4,000,000 "illicit" guns in the country) - that catch peaceable gun owners in their nets.

Gun Owners of South Africa, a group dedicated to defending what's left of firearm owner rights, documents the way the "law-abiding" are harassed. Essentially, because of registration and licensing, the government knows who they are and what they have. And who to go after.

So, we see routine examples of gun owners in serious legal jeopardy because they failed to renew licenses in time. And we see the predictable antis, such as the aptly-named Gun-Free South Africa, "justify" prosecuting a woman for defending herself against an armed repeat offender - because she used her partner's gun, for which she was not licensed.

That's consistent with a report I wrote back in 2001, quoting a South African Safety and Security official admitting, "The laws have nothing to do with criminals. It is a waste of time to make laws to stop criminals. The purpose of this bill is to make it as difficult as possible for people to own licensed firearms and to reduce the number of firearms already licensed."

So it's no surprise that the government's gun registry has turned out to be a corrupt black hole with no visible impact on crime. Or that visible impact does come from untold thousands of guns "stolen" from police.  And speaking of that, it's not unfair to wonder who's doing the stealing, and how many officers have decided they need an after-work gun.

Rampant Violent Crime

It's also no surprise that, per Africa Check, "[T]here were nearly 34 murders recorded per 100,000 people in the country." Compare that to five per 100,000 in the United States (for all methods) per the World Bank, citing the UN Office on Drugs and Crime's International Homicide Statistics database.

All violent crime is through the roof. Again, per Africa  Check, rape, assault, robbery, carjackings, home invasions, burglary and the like prompted the U.S. State Department to issue a travel advisory warning:

 "Exercise increased caution in South Africa due to crime ... Violent crime, such as armed robbery, rape, carjacking, mugging, and 'smash-and-grab' attacks on vehicles, is common. There is a higher risk of violent crime in the central business districts of major cities after dark."

The 'Moderate' ANC

Give it a few years, and we'll see even more of that in the United States, that is, if those bent on culturally terraforming our country with unlimited Third World "immigration," combined with disarming the citizenry, are allowed to prevail. We who oppose that may then find ourselves facing "leadership" like that exhibited by South African Marxist thug and just-resigned President Jacob Zuma, singing songs like "Shoot the Farmer, Kill the Boer."

See, it's not just the EFF posing a radical physical threat. Despite the clean-up of his image by the Obama administration and "progressive" media, Nelson Mandela and his African National Congress were once regarded by Western leaders as Soviet-backed communists and terrorists.  Mandela's wife Winnie, whose bodyguards kidnapped four boys, murdering a 14-year-old,  notoriously "told a crowd in April 1986 that 'with our necklaces and our boxes of matches we will liberate this country.'" She was endorsing "necklacing," the barbaric murder practice of putting a gasoline-soaked tire around a victim's neck and setting it on fire.

And it's not just Winnie who went rogue, as much as apologists would try to convince us otherwise.

"'Go safely Umkhonto. Umkhonto we Sizwe. We the members of the Umkhonto have pledged ourselves to kill them - kill the whites,'" National Review Online quoted from "Spear of the Nation." The "MK" was "the military wing of the Marxist African National Congress ... established by its commander, Nelson Mandela, to prosecute a terrorist war against South Africa's racist apartheid regime."

"The MK led a terrorist insurgency that included bombings of public places," the article elaborates. "It killed many, many more civilians than it did members of the regime's security forces - copiously including women and children. Indeed, it killed many more people than the approximately 7,000 black South Africans who, according to the post-apartheid Truth and Reconciliation Commission, were killed by the regime during the 46 years of apartheid. In fact, twice that number, over 14,000 people, were killed between 1990 and 1994 - the period during which the ANC was legalized and black-on-black violence became rampant, just as it is in South Africa today. The ANC systematically killed rivals for power and suspected regime informants - most notoriously, by the savage method of 'necklacing'..."

Having learned from those who came before him, Malema, who pretty much dismisses the ANC as weak tea, also joyously sang "Kill the Boer" for enthusiastic followers, and the desperate-to-stay-on-top African National Congress defended it, asserting, "These songs cannot be regarded as hate speech." So obviously - if we listen to our "progressive" politicians and media - saying otherwise is just the hateful raving of paranoid racists.

And that's despite the "game plan" being no surprise to those who have known it for some time, as a memoir from constitutional lawyer and Member of Parliament in South Africa with the Inkatha Freedom Party, Mario Oriani-Ambrosini, revealed:

"In his brutal honesty, [current President Cyril] Ramaphosa told me of the ANC's 25-year strategy to deal with the whites: it would be like boiling a frog alive, which is done by raising the temperature very slowly. Being cold-blooded, the frog does not notice the slow temperature increase, but if the temperature is raised suddenly, the frog will jump out of the water. He meant that the black majority would pass laws transferring wealth, land, and economic power from white to black slowly and incrementally, until the whites lost all they had gained in South Africa, but without taking too much from them at any given time to cause them to rebel or fight."

The Shape of Things to Come

That's pretty much how those on the left describe Canadian activist Lauren Southern, along with the typical "alt-right" label used to automatically dismiss her as a "hater." Her warnings against the overrunning of the West by Islam and "refugees" led to her being detained in France and denied entry to the UK. Those in power don't want her voice to be heard and considered.

Especially when she talks about South Africa, which Southern's in-production documentary "Farmlands" means to do.

"Never before has anyone taken such an in-depth look at the racial oppression, the political corruption and the long and complex history of one of the world's one-time greatest nations in one full length documentary," Southern promises. "I'll be delivering my reports, covering farm murders, government corruption, racial attacks and the drought, here."

Those living the nightmare are doing more than documenting abuses, although they've done a thorough job of that as well.

Suidlanders, an emergency-plan initiative constituted as a non-state civil defense organization under the Geneva Conventions, anticipates the collapse of South African infrastructure and its degradation into civil war and/or murderous lawlessness. The group, "officially founded in 2006 to prepare a Protestant Christian South African Minority for a coming violent revolution," maintains, "We are non-aggressive and legal in our preparation."

That preparation includes:

"A nationwide off-grid communications network has been designed to function when the conventional communications grid goes down. A nationwide online evacuation assistance website provides extraction coordinates to our members. Through our nationwide monitoring network we are aware of and report incidents of instability around the country."

The emergency plan prepares both for "sporadic violence and/or anarchy" and for "national anarchy and conflict" through coordinated evacuations to predetermined locations. And if that is not enough? What if the government goes after them?

That's a possibility. And it's not like the "progressive" West is putting out warm welcomes for people it is more agenda-advancing to dismiss as racists who share ancestral guilt for colonialism and apartheid.  Not all in the West view confiscatory and even lethal sentiments against white South Africans as undesirable.

The main thing for people of conscience to remember: There are legal options for survivors of South Africa's apartheid past besides being "slaughtered." Still, sympathy for Suidlanders will be hard to foster, given that anyone expressing support risks being branded and shunned as an excuse-making racist. Harder still will be persuading those whose lives are not directly affected from donating needed funds to people they don't know who are half a world away.

Our own "progressive" establishment and media make swaying public opinion especially difficult. We have no less a figure of authority than Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg expressing preference for the South African over the U.S. Constitution. Another prominent voice from the left, Obama apparatchik Cass Sunstein, has argued America's aversion to socialism is due to racism, and called the South African Constitution, ''the most admirable constitution in the history of the world.''

Never Go Full Theron

We see the face and the very real consequences of citizen disarmament unfolding before our eyes, and we see no shortage of a parade of useful idiots, from ignorant children to Hollywood "stars" (but I repeat myself) demanding more of it. One such privileged dilettante is South African export, actress Charlize Theron, who has no problem making millions playing gun-toting "action heroines," but prefers her fans to be disarmed and vulnerable. After all, losing a few will hardly register on the box office bottom line.

She calls the very idea of teachers being armed in the wake of yet another "gun-free school zone" massacre "outrageous," and shares a personal anecdote dripping with cognitive dissonance. Fox News reported:

"Theron, who grew up in with an alcoholic father, experienced the repercussions of gun violence at a young age. When she was just 15, the actress' father drunkenly attacked her mother, Gerda, and her mother fatally shot him in self-defense. No charges were filed against Gerda after the incident."

She would have preferred the alternative outcome?

Her primary concern for what is happening to the land and people from which she came? Meeting with the guy who sang "Kill the Boers" to "discuss AIDS-related issues." That said, she did do one positive thing related to guns when she convinced Sean Penn to give up his and then "ghosted" him.

What Can We Do?

First and foremost, be aware of the situation, of those involved, and of their histories, and assess for yourself likely outcomes for South Africans targeted by their government. Determine what likely parallels exist between their situation and the situation in the United States as demographic shifts occur over the next few decades, especially considering what that means politically and for gun owner rights.

For those so inclined and who are satisfied that the danger they are facing is critical, Suidlanders provides ways to get involved. To learn more, communicate with them, get updates from their blog, follow them on social media and donate to their cause.

There's also another effort underway, one reminiscent, in a way, of the story of Jewish refugees from Nazi Germany aboard the St. Louis who were denied entry into the U.S. by the Roosevelt administration: a White House petition asking for "Immigration Priority to South African Farmers facing Systematic Land Confiscations and Murder."

Or, as Jacob Malema said Wednesday at a "Human Rights Day" rally, because he's not ready to have his followers "slaughter" them -- "at least for now" -- "Racists must go to Australia - but should leave the keys to their equipment and property behind."

David Codrea is the winner of multiple journalist awards for investigating / defending the RKBA and a long-time gun owner rights advocate who defiantly challenges the folly of citizen disarmament. In addition to being a field editor/columnist at GUNS Magazine, a featured contributor to AmmoLand, contributor to Firearms News website and magazine, and associate editor for Oath Keepers, he blogs at "The War on Guns: Notes from the Resistance" and posts on Twitter: @dcodrea and Facebook.