Listen: “We need a more serious policing system for the agricultural sector" - Mbeki
With farm murders back under the spotlight following a case of alleged vigilantism by four farmers in Parys, Political Economy analyst Moeletsi Mbeki has made a call for better protection of farming communities.
Speaking to callers to The Complimentary Breakfast, prolific commentator Moeletsi Mbeki shared his thoughts on how racial tensions in South Africa have been blown out of proportion due to social media: " I don’t think in South Africa today we have big issues about race. There are still followers of Eugene Terre'Blanche in South Africa who would like to see a racial conflagration.”
Mbeki's reflections of the realities of corruption raise a serious note of concern: “There are many politicians that are involved in corruption and I have my own experiences as a business person, direct experiences not hearsay about corruption. However, there are intuitions that are there to fight corruption for example Corruption Watch. The courts are very tough on corruption too."
On the contentious issue of farm murders, given the drought period South Africa is currently caught up in, Mbeki says: “We need a more serious policing system that needs to be introduced into the agricultural sector . I am an investor myself at a farm which is a feedlot in Delmas and both workers and the management are exposed to a lot of crime in that area. The government in my view misunderstood that whole protection system (the commando system) that used to exist. Instead of studying what the system was and adopting it to the new constitutional system they (the government) just scrapped it. That was not a clever move to do, as it’s not just the farms that are not protected it’s also our borders – South Africa’s borders are not policed."