Farmlands

The gorgeous Lauren Southern stars in her first full length documentary, virtually a one-woman production, and it is a difficult subject indeed she tackles. She begins with an extremely brief historical background to South Africa, one of which few if any opponents of the former apartheid régime are aware. Namely that whites have been in the Cape longer than blacks.

Its original inhabitants were the Bushmen, referred to here as the Khoikhoi. Although she tackles the war waged against them by the Bantu, what Lauren does not mention here is that the Bushmen are now facing virtual extinction, and that their modern persecution began after the end of apartheid. As might be suspected from the title, she concentrates instead on the plight of the white farmers and the increasing white underclass. She visits the quaint Orania, but her most enlightening interview is not with the guy who runs that, rather it is with the deranged Zanele Lwana who is clearly ignorant of the aforementioned history, because she talks of taking back from the whites land blacks have never owned.

Nelson Mandela was widely believed to have been a communist, a belief that was very reasonable in view of his antecedents. In fact, he was no more communist than are the current rulers of China, and a lot more democratic. Whether he was sincere or simply pragmatic, he was sensible enough to realise that without its educated white elite, South Africa would soon deteriorate into the sort of chaos embraced by so many other African nations. Sadly, his successors have taken a more radical path, as Lauren shows here, and overall her mood is one of pessimism. Hopefully, she is wrong, but it doesn't look like that at the moment.

To all the geniuses who say that Lauren claims there's an ongoing genocide of white people in South Africa, here's a direct quote from the end of the documentary: "Does that amount to genocide? Not yet. But according to organizations like Genocide Watch and taking into account everything I've seen and heard on the ground, South Africa is stepping closer to that reality every single day." (1:09:03). This documentary shows that there's a serious threat to white people in South Africa and it seems like the majority of them live in fear of being killed, raped or tortured just because of their skin color. A civil war within 5 years, as one of Lauren's interviewees said, seems very possible. There is absolutely nothing related to white supremacy in the current situation in South Africa. I recommend all people who claim this is propaganda and hatemongering to crawl out of their caves and realize that there are places in the world where white people have to fear for their lives daily just because they're white. This documentary serves as a reminder to everyone that white people CAN BE discriminated against.

As for the documentary itself, I think it's very, very good. Considering it's Lauren's first project of that scale, she and her crew have done an outstanding job. There are some minor issues I'd like them to take into account in the future projects like adding subtitles to the interviews because I couldn't always understand what was being said, mostly due to different accents (perhaps also because English isn't my mother tongue). Also some nature shots were put in weird places sometimes like the interview with the second woman who was telling about her father being shot (which is horrible, by the way), then it cut to the sunset (22:34) and then back to the interview with her. It would make sense if the later interview scenes were shot during the evening or night but the lighting clearly indicates that the whole interview was conducted during the day. Also I feel like the bits between the interviews where Lauren talks in the first person sometimes sounded too similar: "I was shocked", "I had to investigate further" etc. There may have been other things I could criticize the documentary for, but as I said, they're minor and don't spoil the experience. What IS important is that Lauren brings light to the horrible current situation in South Africa and presents interviews and viewpoints that mainstream media are too afraid to show. Great job, Lauren, and never stop doing what you're doing!

Compelling documentary uncovering the violence against South African farmers. What is most shocking is barbarity of the violence - torturing people, rapes committed with family members made to watch or the rape of small children, people being boiled and other horrific crimes. These are race based hate crimes in what is clearly a campaign of terrorism and from what other information sources I have seen very likely carried out with the unofficial support of the government who recently announced they would take farmland from white farmers without compensation. Not the subject of this documentary but when you look at other sources it is also shocking how actively the govt seems to be implementing policies that will destroy Sth Africa. Already one taxpayer supports around five people with unemployment over 30%. Undermining property right security by taking land will cause investors to flee and result in more job losses and food shortages. Corruption is at ridiculous levels as is murder and rape. Other crimes against blacks are also very high but mostly carried out in a casual manner rather than designed to inflight cruelty which distinguishes the farm murders from other crimes (and farmers are about four times more likely to be killed than other Sth Africans). It's hard to see a solution to this problem as some will emigrate but others will stay on the land their families will own for 300+ years making them an even smaller and more vulnerable minority. But the rapid dissolution of Sth Africa into even further levels of poverty, unemployment, infrastructure collapse and social chaos of the policies the govt is now implementing does not bode well for the farmers. This is in the context of politicians already singing about killing white farmers at rallies in a state where the police force cannot and will not enforce the law to protect a minority population because they are too overwhelmed with crime and are being told not to spend time on crime against whites. This is an extremely dangerous genocidal mixture. Sending my prayers over to Sth Africa in the hopes that catastrophic violence can be avoided.

Great documentary! Been looking forward to watching it for months now

Forget what you have been told to believe, watch the documentary and make up your own mind.

This in not right-wing propaganda as some claim, looking at the reviews some of them have not even bothered to watch the documentary.

Lauren Southern did what journalists are supposed to do, she went to the country and interviewed the people living there. She went and found out for herself what is really going on. She did a very good job in my opinion, but watch it for yourself and make up your own mind.

Approximately 60 000 commercial farmers in 1990, approximately 30 000 commercial farmers today. The South African population has increased by millions, the farmers have halved. Does that make any logical sense? Watch the documentary and decide for yourself.