Farmlands

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.

This documentary is both brilliant and disturbing. Lauren Southern shines a light on the plight of the white racial minority in South Africa, a community under increasing threat as racial tension grow, particular around the subject of land rights. While the documentary admittedly only looks at one side of the issue it does show, in disturbing detail, the justified fear under which these communities are living. This is an issue that is far to ignored by the main stream media and this film does a great deal to help raise awareness and is recommended to anybody with even a passing interest in the subject.

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.

After following this matter for about a year I am incredibly happy with this documentary. For a good reason she is trying to show how mistreated white farmers are in SA.

This documentary has its flaws: Lauren Southern's narration is over-the-top; the content is superficial, consistenting mostly of a small number of anecdotes and interviewee's opinions; and it's a bit one-sided. It doesn't really answer the bigger questions it raises about its subject matter. Despite that, it's an important subject that doesn't get enough attention. This movie shows a side of the story that's not well known (that of many of the white farmers) and made me want to learn more about the situation in South Africa. There's definitely nothing racist, neo-Nazi, or hateful about the movie. It's unfortunate that many people will leave 1 star reviews for this film without even watching it, because of their political agenda.