Shooting straight – defending you and yours within the law

South Africa’s farmers and other rural residents are considered easy pickings by determined and often violent criminals. Legislation allows citizens to own and use firearms in defence of life. However, according to experts who spoke to Lloyd Phillips, legal firearm owners must be sure to avoid falling foul of the law themselves.

- Lloyd Phillips

South Africa’s ongoing farm attacks and murders have achieved national and international attention, and often condemnation, and have become a major worry for farmers, their families and employees, and other rural residents.

The leaders of two national private-sector agricultural associations independently agree that, given this intensity of rural crime in combination with the fact that farm attackers are themselves often armed with illegally acquired guns, all of their members should legally purchase and own firearms to give themselves a fighting chance against criminals.

Chris van Zyl, assistant general manager at TAU SA, says that irrespective of the country’s “promising” Rural Safety Strategy announced by the South African Police Service (SAPS) in late 2019, the level of crime affecting the agriculture sector “leaves much to be desired”.

HELP IS OFTEN FAR AWAY

“Most farm dwellers live beyond the distances within which effective intervention by police and private security is assured, [and] their vulnerability should be acknowledged by the state. Farm dwellers have to rely on their own awareness and various physical and technological measures to ensure early warning of threats against life and property, as well as be able to neutralise the violent intentions of criminals who, in most cases, outnumber their victims,” says Van Zyl.

He adds that the ongoing security threat to farm dwellers and their property should be considered in the interest of South Africa’s food and fibre security, as well as socioeconomic stability. This dictates that law-abiding farmers and other farm dwellers should have access to appropriate firearms.

Tommie Esterhuyse, chairperson of Agri SA’s Rural Safety Centre of Excellence, says that South Africa’s farmers and farm dwellers also need firearms for use in the day-today running of a typical farm.