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told me that she was interviewed under
false pretenses. “Another farmer phoned
me to say he’s got this Canadian chickie
doing a documentary about the drought—
can he bring her to me? Hence, I was
in my farm boots and my shorts, to go
and show them the effect of the drought
on the farm, and Lauren sat down and
said, ‘Tell me about your dad.’ Com-
pletely caught me off guard.”
We met in the town of Graaff-Reinet,
near the farm where Ihlenfeldt grew
up, and to which she had returned after
her father’s murder. Ihlenfeldt and her
husband, Pete, do not think her father’s
killing was politically motivated, but
they are convinced that there is no fu-
ture for them—or for white people in
general—in South Africa. “My son spent
four years at university, but because he’s
white he doesn’t get the job,” Ihlenfeldt
said. “Our kids are saying now, ‘I want
to get out of this country,’ because of
entitlement.” Ihlenfeldt was referring
to Black Economic Empowerment leg-
islation, which rewards companies that
hire black employees and penalizes those
that don’t. “The only way is to leave,”
she said. “Middle-income people, the
tax base, they’re leaving every day.”
South Africa is still a place in which
it is highly advantageous to be white.
The average white person there earns
five times as much as the average black
person. (In McGregor, people of color
cross to the white side of Voortrekker
Street every day, to tend gardens, clean
houses, build fences. White people are
rarely seen on the colored side.) Yet
many whites feel that their status is
threatened. In the past two decades, ac-
cording to estimates, some four hun-
dred thousand more whites have left
the country than have moved in.
The Ihlenfeldts may follow. After
seeing Southern’s film, a German leg-
islator contacted them with an offer.
“He’s part of this committee that’s been
tasked to look into farm attacks and get
farmers to Germany,” Pete said. “If we
arrive tomorrow with the clothes on
our back, politicians there will give us
asylum. They’ll give us a safe house for
six weeks. They’ll feed us. They’ll clothe
us. They’ll try to find us jobs.” Peter
Dutton, Australia’s minister of Home
Affairs, has expressed the intention to
do something similar; in March, 2018,
he announced that, owing to the “hor-rific circumstances” faced by white South
Africans, his department would give
“special attention” to any of them seek-
ing to immigrate to a “civilized coun-
try like ours.” (The statement was con-
demned by Human Rights Watch, and
an Australian senator said, “The bloke
is an out-and-out racist.”)
Pete Ihlenfeldt hopes to see foreign
intervention in South Africa. “I think
they should back us, to stop the farm
murders,” he said.
“How?” Jeanine asked sharply. There
are some twenty thousand homicides
a year in South Africa. Would foreign
forces guard only the white farms? “It’s
not a genocide,” she said, shaking her
head. “You must understand: Afrikaans
culture is completely different from En-
glish. They are far right—that’s why
they love that word, ‘genocide.’ ”
Pete was unconvinced. “When you
see the brutality of what they’re doing
to the farmers—raping a woman and
burning her with an iron and shooting
her kneecaps—these are brutal attacks
on white people. It’s always color against
color.” Plaasmoorde has terrified whites
for decades. In 1999, J. M. Coetzee pub-
lished “Disgrace,” perhaps the most cel-
ebrated novel by a white South African,
which centers on an attack committed
not far from the Ihlenfeldts’ farm.
Neither of the Ihlenfeldts believed
that there was a link between the at-
tacks and the proposed amendment.
“It’s two completely separate issues,”
Jeanine said. “This land story is about
the election.”
Pete interjected, “They’re doing this
to get votes. What’s the word?”
Jeanine replied, dryly, “Bribing.”T
he A.N.C. has never lost a na-
tional election, but it is slipping.
In the last nationwide municipal elec-
tions, support for the Party fell to its
lowest level since 1994, as it lost con-
trol of three important metropolitan
areas—Johannesburg, Nelson Mandela
Bay, and the City of Tshwane. The
D.A. won twenty-six per cent of the
national vote by promising centrist pol-
icies and technocratic good govern-
ment. At the same time, the E.F.F.,
Malema’s group, threatened from the
left. “The A.N.C. had an operating
theory that the rural areas were going
to keep them in power—that they needto cozy up to the chiefs while ham-
mering away at the white farmers,”
Ruth Hall, a political scientist at the
University of the Western Cape, told
me. “But now, in the urban areas, it’s
losing votes to the E.F.F. hand over
fist.” To compete, it has embraced ex-
propriation without compensation.
Ramaphosa, who previously served
as Zuma’s Deputy President, has mixed
incentives. Before entering the govern-
ment, he was an anti-apartheid leader
and a trade unionist, strongly allied
with Mandela; he is also a business-
man who built a fortune of half a bil-
lion dollars, much of it during his time
with the A.N.C. Ramaphosa declined
to be interviewed for this article, as did
the current Deputy President, David
Mabuza, who chairs the Inter-Minis-
terial Committee on Land Reform. A
person who has discussed the issue with
Ramaphosa told me, “Cyril doesn’t be-
lieve in expropriation without com-
pensation. He got stuck with it. For a
state President coming into an ailing
economy, taking over the reins from a
dysfunctional kleptocrat, and then hav-
ing to go on a world road show to con-
vince investors to come into the coun-
try—while at the same time saying,
‘Expropriation without compensation’?
It’s a nightmare!”
In South Africa, voters elect a party
to lead Parliament, which then deter-
mines which of its members will be-
come the President. The most recent
A.N.C. convention, in 2017, was cha-
otic: it was unclear until the last min-
ute whether Ramaphosa or his oppo-
nent, Nkosazana Dlamini-Zuma—one
of Jacob Zuma’s ex-wives—would head
the Party. “Ramaphosa got in by a whis-
ker, and then the Zuma camp said, ‘By
the way, we have a resolution about land
expropriation without compensation,’ ”
Hall said. “It ended up at midnight with
fisticuffs, and the conference was at risk
of collapsing on this issue. Ramapho-
sa’s election would have been null and
void. So he got in, but he was given the
poison chalice.”
Ramaphosa appointed Hall and
nine other scholars and business lead-
ers to serve on an advisory panel on
land reform; they are rushing to pre-
pare a report on the future of the issue.
“The irony of this whole debate is that
the property clause explicitly madeFact Levy South Africa 05_13_19.L [Print]_9508344.indd 51 5/3/19 7:51 PM