South Africa hit by new rural race murders

JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (Reuters) -- A black farm worker and a white woman farmer were killed during the weekend in the latest in a series of apparently racially motivated attacks in rural South Africa.

Two other people, one black and one white, were injured in incidents on Saturday and Sunday, police said.

They said black farm workers Adam Smit, 38, and Dawid Klaaste were beaten by two white employees on Saturday and left chained by the neck to a tree on a farm in Northern Cape province.

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When they were found by police and Smit's distraught wife on Sunday, Smit was dead and Klaaste had to be rushed to hospital.

A police spokeswoman told Reuters that two white men, aged 30 and 16, were to appear in court later on Monday.

In two other incidents, police said two white farmers were attacked on farms east of Johannesburg.

A 59-year-old woman was strangled to death on her chicken farm and an 82-year-old man was shot and wounded when he returned to his farm from church.

The attacks came a week after South African television showed graphic amateur video of six white policemen setting dogs on black job-hunters in an incident that sparked the country's deepest soul-searching on race since white minority rule ended in 1994.

Human rights groups have called the videotaped assault the most graphic example of apartheid-style racial violence that most South Africans had ever have to confront.

Rights groups said the weekend attack on the black farm workers showed racial tension was increasing in rural areas.

"It's reached crisis levels. There's an impression that white farmers and workers can murder and torture with impunity," said Andile Mngxitama, land rights coordinator at the National Land Committee, a South African nongovernmental organization.

"People are living in conditions of semi-slavery ... Land reform and proper justice are vital," Mngxitama said.

More than 1,000 white farmers have been killed since 1996 in attacks which, according to farm monitors, makes being a white commercial farmer the most dangerous job in the country.

They say blacks are responsible for most of the murders of farmers.

White farm owner Eicker Henning was jailed last week for 25 years for attacking a black farm worker with a cattle prod and dragging him to his death behind a vehicle with a rope around his neck.

Another farmer forced families of farm workers to live with pigs in an attempt to evict them from his land.

Such abuses prompted President Thabo Mbeki on Sunday to urge whites to confront racism, saying they did not want to talk about it because they were embarrassed about their past.

"I am convinced that, to deal with racial polarization, we have to address the matter openly and honestly. It is exceedingly uncomfortable for a lot of white people to deal with this," Mbeki said.

Copyright 2000 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.

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