Chancellor of Oxford University talks to BLM followers.

The Chancellor of Oxford University, was on the Today Programme on BBC Radio 4 yesterday on the removal of statues of people linked to slavery.   Interesting statements. The Daily Telegraph headline yesterday was "Oxford will not rewrite history".
Patten commented "“Education is not indoctrination. Our history is not a blank page on which we can write our own version of what it should have been according to our contemporary views and prejudice"
 Rhodes must fall ????

Dear students,
Cecil Rhodes’s generous bequest has contributed greatly to the comfort and well being of many generations of Oxford students – a good many of them, dare we say it, better, brighter and more deserving than you.
This does not necessarily mean we approve of everything Rhodes did in his lifetime – but then we don’t have to. Cecil Rhodes died over a century ago. Autres temps, autres moeurs 2. If you don’t understand what this means – and it would not remotely surprise us if that were the case – then we really think you should ask yourself the question: “Why am I at Oxford?”
Oxford, let us remind you, is the world’s second oldest extant university. Scholars have been studying here since at least the 11th century. We’ve played a major part in the invention of Western civilisation, from the 12th century intellectual renaissance through the Enlightenment and beyond. Our alumni include William of Ockham, Roger Bacon, William Tyndale, John Donne, Sir Walter Raleigh, Erasmus, Sir Christopher Wren, William Penn, Rep. Adam Smith (D-WA), Samuel Johnson, Robert Hooke, William Morris, Oscar Wilde, Emily Davison, Cardinal Newman. We’re a big deal. And most of the people privileged to come and study here are conscious of what a big deal we are. Oxford is their alma mater – their dear mother – and they respect and revere her accordingly.
And what were your ancestors doing in that period? Living in mud huts, mainly. Sure we’ll concede you the short lived Southern African civilisation of Great Zimbabwe. But let’s be brutally honest here. The contribution of the Bantu tribes to modern civilisation has been as near as damn it to zilch.
You’ll probably say that’s “racist”. But it’s what we here at Oxford prefer to call “true.” Perhaps the rules are different at other universities. In fact, we know things are different at other universities. We’ve watched with horror at what has been happening across the pond from the University of Missouri to the University of Virginia and even to revered institutions like Harvard and Yale: the “safe spaces”; the #blacklivesmatter; the creeping cultural relativism; the stifling political correctness; what Allan Bloom rightly called “the closing of the American mind”. At Oxford however, we will always prefer facts and free, open debate to petty grievance-mongering, identity politics and empty sloganeering. The day we cease to do so is the day we lose the right to call ourselves the world’s greatest university.
Of course, you are perfectly within your rights to squander your time at Oxford on silly, vexatious, single-issue political campaigns. (Though it does make us wonder how stringent the vetting procedure is these days for Rhodes scholarships and even more so, for Mandela Rhodes scholarships) We are well used to seeing undergraduates – or, in your case – postgraduates, making idiots of themselves. Just don’t expect us to indulge your idiocy, let alone genuflect before it. You may be black – “BME” as the grisly modern terminology has it – but we are colour blind. We have been educating gifted undergraduates from our former colonies, our Empire, our Commonwealth and beyond for many generations. We do not discriminate over sex, race, colour or creed. We do, however, discriminate according to intellect.
That means, inter alia, that when our undergrads or postgrads come up with fatuous ideas, we don’t pat them on the back, give them a red rosette and say: “Ooh, you’re black and you come from South Africa. What a clever chap you are!”1 No. We prefer to see the quality of those ideas tested in the crucible of public debate. That’s another key part of the Oxford intellectual tradition you see: you can argue any damn thing you like but you need to be able to justify it with facts and logic – otherwise your idea is worthless.
This ludicrous notion you have that a bronze statue of Cecil Rhodes should be removed from Oriel College, because it’s symbolic of “institutional racism” and “white slavery”. Well even if it is – which we dispute – so bloody what? Any undergraduate so feeble-minded that they can’t pass a bronze statue without having their “safe space” violated really does not deserve to be here. And besides, if we were to remove Rhodes’s statue on the premise that his life wasn’t blemish-free, where would we stop? As one of our alumni Dan Hannan has pointed out, Oriel’s other benefactors include two kings so awful – Edward II and Charles I – that their subjects had them killed. The college opposite – Christ Church – was built by a murderous, thieving bully who bumped off two of his wives. Thomas Jefferson kept slaves: does that invalidate the US Constitution? Winston Churchill had unenlightened views about Muslims and India: was he then the wrong man to lead Britain in the war?”
Actually, we’ll go further than that. Your Rhodes Must Fall campaign is not merely fatuous but ugly, vandalistic and dangerous. We agree with Oxford historian RW Johnson that what you are trying to do here is no different from what ISIS and the Al-Qaeda have been doing to artefacts in places like Mali and Syria. You are murdering history.
And who are you, anyway, to be lecturing Oxford University on how it should order its affairs? Your #rhodesmustfall campaign, we
understand, originates in South Africa and was initiated by a black activist who told one of his lecturers “whites have to be killed”. One of you – Sizwe Mpofu-Walsh – is the privileged son of a rich politician and a member of a party whose slogan is “Kill the Boer; Kill the Farmer”; another of you, Ntokozo Qwabe, who is only in Oxford as a beneficiary of a Rhodes scholarship, has boasted about the need for “socially conscious black students” to “dominate white universities, and do so ruthlessly and decisively!”
Great. That’s just what Oxford University needs. Some cultural enrichment from the land of Winnie Mandela, burning tyre necklaces, an AIDS epidemic almost entirely the result of government indifference and ignorance, one of the world’s highest per capita murder rates, institutionalised corruption, tribal politics, anti-white racism and a collapsing economy. Please name which of the above items you think will enhance the lives of the 22,000 students studying here at Oxford.
And then please explain what it is that makes your attention grabbing campaign to remove a listed statue from an Oxford college more urgent, more deserving than the desire of probably at least 20,000 of those 22,000 students to enjoy their time here unencumbered by the irritation of spoilt, ungrateful little tossers on scholarships they clearly don’t merit using racial politics and cheap guilt-tripping to ruin the life and fabric of our beloved university.
Understand us and understand this clearly: you have everything to learn from us; we have nothing to learn from you.
Yours,
Oriel College, Oxford

Farm attacks – an evil within

Farm attacks – an evil within
Nov 02, 2017

Claims of kingpins in charge of well-planned crime operations with connections in government, highly trained hit squads using children to secure intelligence in farm attacks, occasional acts of intimidation to force land owners off their property and inhuman physical trauma inflicted on victims of such heinous crimes speak of the evil that characterises incidents committed against inhabitants of some of the remotest locations in South Africa.

Limpopo is no exception and when embarking on research into farm attacks University of Limpopo (UL) research assistant Cristopher Gumbi couldn’t possibly have been prepared for unearthing the sorrow bottled up in recollections of physical trauma shared by victims of such crimes. Shedding tears with survivors as they revisited the horrors of the past, he got a glimpse of a form of crime that threatens food security and, in turn, the economy of the country.

His findings were consolidated in a 117-page thesis for a Master of Arts degree from the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at UL, which he obtained in September this year. Gumbi’s investigation of the motivational factors for farm attacks and its consequential injurious phenomena looks into such crimes committed in parts of Limpopo and Mpumalanga between 2005 and 2015, bringing him into contact with 23 individuals and groupings who have all been survivors.

Before getting started with the interview Gumbi pointed at his predominantly monotone outfit in solidarity with scores of South Africans commemorating Black Monday, the countrywide action commemorating lives lost in farm attacks and survivors thereof.

From the study the reader gets varying perspectives of the situation as Gumbi delves into a decade of attacks through conversations with survivors from both genders, who varied in age from 38 to 88 years.

Harrowing accounts made him question, among others, the need for inflicting physical trauma upon victims during the orchestration of attacks, he remarked during the interview. “The violent nature of attacks is amply demonstrated by such actions as beatings, tying victims down with cable ties, threats of burning victims with hot water or poisoning them and shooting at first sight,” he notes in his study.

Without exception all respondents stated that attacks which occurred on their farms were well-planned, mentions Gumbi. “There is a clear indication that attackers conduct thorough surveillance of their target and surroundings before they pounce. This shows the high amount of intelligence and patience they put in, in making sure their plan succeeds.” He quotes a victim who stated that the assailants were picked-up by a vehicle after the attack. “This confirms the idea of a hit squad and a getaway car as a form of organised attack,” he states.

He further writes that all of the surviving victims mentioned that the attacks against them were linked to a crime syndicate, with the chief aim of robbing farmers of their money, valuables and weapons in order to fund their operations. In one instance he quotes a victim saying “One of the attackers informed my son that he is part of a crime syndicate and that they cannot remain in custody… These cell groups have kingpins in every town who use kids for stealing because the kids cannot be prosecuted… This is a well-planned operation involving Police, public prosecutors, judges, magistrates to high ranking officials of the government…”

Attackers with military training
Some of the victims maintained the belief that their attackers were a mix of South African and Zimbabwean with military training, according to the information contained in the study. In one incident a victim recalled that the attackers collected all spent cartridges on the scene. In another attack the assailants allegedly ran more than 4 km while carrying rifles to their getaway vehicle and changed clothes in order for them not to be recognised. Gumbi reaches the conclusion that an attack on a farmstead from four sides during one such incident, which resulted in the farmer being shot in the head, indicated a form of formal training on the part of the assailants.

In 47% of the cases money and jewellery were not targeted while 65% of the respondents stated that their attackers were not very interested in other items but their weapons. What the researcher had established though, was that attackers always knew the arrangement of the targeted farmsteads, where the safes were and the weapons kept. It led to the inference that the attacks should have been orchestrated with the help of insiders, who allegedly included teens living on farms.

Attacks believed to be form of intimidation
According to Gumbi’s research 78% of the respondents who reported farm attacks related a form of intimidation, aimed at driving farmers off their land. A female victim informed him that she had believed the attack on her farm was a form of intimidation, because the attackers never stole anything but just started firing through the windows of the house without prior warning. “More than 60 shots were fired. My husband shot back with a .38 revolver. He (name withheld) tossed (the) phone to me to call for help. They shot him (name withheld) in the head. They never came inside. The attackers shouted that they will kill all…”

A farmer who reported that he was attacked by twelve men informed the researcher that one drew a gun and started shooting. “When asked what their primary objective of attacking the farm was, they responded that it was not about cattle, money, guns or jewellery, but about taking control of the farm.”

Thirty-nine per cent of the respondents stated that they knew the attackers. A respondent who was attacked twice, in 2007 and 2014, said his wife knew one of the attackers because she recognised his voice during the initial attack.
Gumbi quoted survivors who were asked whether farms with poor security were singled out for attacks as saying “Poor security is not a contributing factor; it is all about brutal revenge and financial purposes” and “I don’t think poor security is the point here. These attacks are orchestrated by some leader somewhere who wants to drive farmers off their land.”

Gumbi further remarks that farmers do not feel that they are receiving the necessary service delivery from the South African Police Service. From the responses it is clear that the Police are not doing enough to assist the farmers during and after an attack, he writes. “Negligence and dereliction of duties are evident from the responses of respondents. Serious allegations concerning negligence with firearms raise concerns.”

Farm attacks need to be addressed holistically hence, the researcher concedes, more role players such as all government departments and non-profit organisations need to play a more active role in improving security on farms to protect food security.

Gumbi points out that unless security on farms is made a national priority, farm attacks will continue to increase. He recommends that it gets prioritised and discussed as part of South Africa’s national agenda, particularly in Parliament. He also recommends that racial stereotypes in farming urgently get addressed. “The South African justice system needs to recognise farm attacks as a criminal charge of its own with a strict mandatory minimum sentence applied; this will serve as a form of deterrence to attackers.”

Gumbi expresses great concern over farm attacks in South Africa not being given the necessary attention by the government, considering the effects such crimes have on the economy and the well-being of victims, families and communities.

According to him South Africa has the responsibility to view farm attacks as a violation of human rights and a threat to the country’s economy and food security. “The rural farming community contributes substantially to the growth and development of the South African economy.”