The widely reported case of Annelle de Bruin, who plotted to kill her husband so that she could inherit R50-million and make his murder look like a farm attack in the mould of the false claims of a genocide against white farmers, is not an isolated incident.
A Sunday World investigation has established that at least eight more white Afrikaner farmers were murdered by family members or relatives who went on to pass off the crimes as farm murders in a grander scheme of a genocide against Afrikaner farmers.
The false narrative of a genocide has been used by organisations and people opposed to land reform to tarnish the image of the country.
It has gained undue traction with US President Donald Trump’s administration, which has sought to punish SA by withholding aid and imposing trade tariffs.
Our investigation has unearthed the following cases:
- A Groblersdal, Mpumalanga farm manager, Raymond Papapavlou, was shot dead in his bed on October 4, 2020, and his murder was described by one Jason Bartlett, on his X account, as part of “the genocide of the minority Boer people”.
Bartlett wrote: “The results of communism are easy to see as the president [of SA] tries to cover up the #FarmMurders. Another young farmer brutally tortured and murdered in South Africa!”
However, a police investigation later revealed that Papapavlou’s wife, Simone, and her alleged lesbian lover, Patricia Ray Lee Smith, approached Simone’s father, Shane Richard Dean Oliver, who was serving time at Kgosi Mampuru prison for his brother’s murder, to ask him to help them kill Papapavlou after the farm manager had refused to divorce his wife.
Police established that Simone and Smith planned Papapavlou’s murder via WhatsApp. The two women and the alleged middleman, Phillip Manchidi, were arrested.
- Farmer Johan Pretorius was found hacked to death with an axe and his body badly mutilated in Nigel, Gauteng, on June 20, 2019, in what was initially reported as a brutal farm murder.
Pretorius’ friend, Adam Lukas van Staden, later surrendered to the police and confessed to his murder. Reports characterised Pretorius’ murder as a “racial hate crime”, akin to the “slow genocide, and horrors of farm murders”.
- Anelle de Bruin was arrested in January this year in Maletswai (formerly Aliwal North) in Eastern Cape for allegedly plotting to kill her 56-year-old husband, Johan, in a staged “farm attack” in order to inherit more than R50-million in the event of his death.
De Bruin allegedly sought the assistance of a police informant to help her find the hitmen to kill her husband and also added that they must also shoot the family dogs, as well as the tyres of her husband’s bakkie after killing him to make it look like a farm attack.
De Bruin is out on R2 000 bail, and the case has been postponed to April 23.
- Sonell Joubert was arrested in February after the body of Jurgen Nel was discovered at Lowhills Farm in Mpumalanga with six stab wounds on February 1, 2025. Joubert, the owner of Tswale Educational Elephant Interactions, allegedly stabbed Nel in a dispute in what was initially said to be a farm murder in the mould of attacks on farms.
Joubert and her life partner Johann Möller were arrested. Möller is out on R80 000 bail while Joubert remains in custody. The case was postponed to May 8, 2025.
- Stellenbosch farmer, Stefan Smit, was found dead on his kitchen floor at his Louiesenhof farmhouse in Western Cape on June 2, 2019, in what was initially believed to be another farm murder.
He was killed two days after he sold one of his farms, Watergang, for R45.6-million. His wife, Zurenah, as well as former policeman-turned-private investigator Derek Sait, and Sait’s brother-in-law, Steven Damon, were arrested for the murder in December 2020, months after he was shot on his farm.
A police investigation also established that Zurenah also allegedly forged Smit’s will to leave the vast, estate to her and make her the executor, leaving very little going to his children from a previous marriage.
The case is still on trial at the Western Cape High Court.
- Jay Peters was sentenced to life imprisonment in January by the Nelspruit Regional Court in Mpumalanga for the murder of his 68-year-old grandmother, Susanna Kilmister, at Cromdale Farm, outside Nelspruit, where they both resided, on February 28, 2022.
- A mathematics primary school teacher, Johan Smith, was arrested for murdering his 57-year-old wife, Theonette, in Brits, North West province, and dumping her body in October last year.
Theonette was murdered on a farm, and her half-naked body was dumped next to a railway line in the Rashoop area outside of Brits.
Smith initially reported his wife missing, claiming that she left their house, which is on one of the farms in the area, after an argument. He was arrested after police found blood in their home in what looked like someone had tried to clean the murder scene.
Smith has been denied bail since his arrest.
- A mother and son were arrested in Louis Trichardt, Limpopo, in 2019 for the murder of a 45-year-old Tony Strydom in what was initially believed to be a farm murder.
Strydom’s wife, Rieta, and one of his sons, Hendrik, were arrested and charged with murder. Strydom was killed in July 2016, but Rieta and Hendrik were arrested in April 2019 after years of investigation.
Police records reveal that only 53 farmers were killed in South Africa in the past five years, while 101 farm dwellers were murdered over the same period.
Hardly the numbers to justify the outcry about a genocide.
Only four farm security guards were killed while eight visitors were murdered on farms in the same period.
Police spokesperson Brigadier Athlenda Mathe said 34 farm workers were also killed over the past five years.
This is in contrast to Trump’s allegations that “bad things are happening [to white people] in South Africa”, especially in the farming community,
Minister of Police Senzo Mchunu, while tabling crime statistics, said there was a decrease in crime rates. He said the statistics indicated that only one farm murder occurred between October and December 2024.
Out of a total of 6 953 reported murders, police recorded 12 farm murders, with only one victim being a farmer.
Right-wing lobby group AfriForum, which sells itself as a civil rights campaigner, however, rejected Mchunu’s statistics, arguing that the minister was either misinformed or was deliberately downplaying the scale of farm murders.
Recently, a report compiled by the Rome Research Institute of South Africa stated that there were 15 farm attacks in South Africa and two farm murders in March, 39 farm attacks in January and February, with two farm murders reported.
