South Africa is a broken country, and the African National Congress (ANC) is the one holding the pieces. Two truths coexist: they have failed everyone - black, white, farmers, children - and their lies have twisted us so deeply that we fight each other instead of holding them accountable. What was once a nation full of hope has become a shadow of poverty, crime, and shattered ubuntu. Consider this a warning to the West: watch what happens when the truth is buried.
Hunted, Haunted and Denied
This collapse of governance is not abstract, it has deadly consequences. Opportunistic crime breeds targeted attacks, and yet we are told to lump xenophobia, farm attacks, and political killings together as “just crime.” There is a difference, and it can only be fully understood through lived experience. Telling a farmer he isn’t a target when he spends every day locking down his farm and family is a joke. These people get the calls. They hear the attack arriving in their bedrooms. So let’s start with who’s hunted.
The attackers know full well they’re facing dogs, electric fences, guns, cameras, and patrols, yet much of the world still believes they would risk their lives for a cellphone and a few hundred rand. Farm attacks aren’t robberies; they are meticulously planned, targeted murders. Farmers, many Afrikaners, lock their doors tighter than most Westerners ever do, not out of paranoia, but survival instinct. They patrol their land, become their own first responders, fight back, and, sadly, bury their dead.
This pattern extends beyond farms. Despite a few loud but ineffective campaigns, the assassinations continue, proving the cold grip of targeted crime. KwaZulu-Natal in saw dozens of political killings since 2024, including that of Nhlakanipho Shangase, an eThekwini councillor gunned down over ANC tender disputes, and Loyiso Nkohla of the Western Cape in Philippi, whose death in 2023 was linked to gangs-related politics.
“They’re after our kids!”
"My motherly instincts are telling me my daughter is still alive and in this area. We will find her, I will walk on foot to find her. I will look in every little shack, I'm going to do it by myself if I have to," said Kelly Smith, who is currently facing trial for her alleged involvement in her daughter’s disappearance. Her words struck a chord because they mirror the pain of communities under siege by organised criminal networks preying on the vulnerable.
Everyone in these targeted communities suffers from PTSD, yet the only attention they receive comes from politicians’ photo ops.
Beyond farms, the scale of violence is staggering. In 2023, South Africa recorded 42,780 rapes, over 100 per day, with one in three women experiencing assault. Children, like Kelly Smith’s daughter Josllin, snatched by traffickers or attacked by strangers, are not random victims; these attacks are deliberate. They are executions, chosen targets, while the ANC shrugs.
Gaslighting a Nation
That’s where the gaslighting kicks in. The ANC calls all this a “crime problem,” hiding the clear overtones of class and racial warfare and dismissing the screams of the hunted. They have convinced poor black South Africans that they must defend the party that keeps them poor, and struggling white South Africans that any mention of their suffering is an act of racism. Meanwhile, the privileged - white, black, and every shade in between - believe that if they are safe, everyone else must be safe. It’s a trap, designed to split us apart.
In Cape Town, the wealthy sip wine in gated estates, pretending the Cape Flats, where gangs hunt and kill like animals, doesn’t exist. Commuters are robbed of their pay cheques at knifepoint on train platforms, foreigners are burned alive in hate-filled attacks, and women continue to be targeted and raped.
And while ordinary South Africans dodge bullets, the ANC wastes billions on its own bellies and PR instead of investing in the lives under its care. Take the Eastern Cape, where Port Elizabeth became Gqeberha in 2021. The ANC claimed that “changing the name of Port Elizabeth to Gqeberha will improve service delivery”. Millions went to new street signs, while hospitals remain tombs of broken equipment, with patients dying in hallways because the average person can’t get care.
Since 2009, they’ve blown R500 billion on corruption, blaming apartheid while stealing funds meant for children’s nutrition and clinics. It’s not just waste, it’s choosing optics over oxygen, letting the hunted bleed.
The sheltered don’t see it. Too safe to grasp the danger, some flaunt soccer matches with their kids or pictures with elderly parents to prove “all is fine” after a child is murdered or a couple tortured to death. Sick, right? With monopoly capital, the Louis Vuitton teen, oppressed yet privileged, scorns the squatter-camp white labeled a “racist.” Estate whites, never near “arm blankes” or farmers, insist nothing’s wrong. Let them eat cake. The late-night DJ flaunting privilege hasn’t seen the Afrikaner camp, the colored gang turf, or the raped farmwife watching her husband die, yet claims no one is targeted.
Denied and Silenced
Afriforum has begged for years to name farm attacks, only to be met with silence from the ANC. Desperate after endless murders, they even went to the U.S. pre-2025, under Biden. If you’re angry that your plight is ignored, ask yourself: who’s denying it?
The ANC wants us angry at those who raise the alarm, not at them, the ones looting and failing the country.
When will we admit that many black South Africans are not disadvantaged, while many white South Africans are extremely disadvantaged, and are, in fact, targeted? A common, simplistic argument is: “That farmer killed his worker, so farmers aren’t targeted.” This fallacy exists to confuse and gaslight South Africans into silence over demographic problems that aren’t just about race. It does nothing to help someone like Leah Jazz proclaiming how “easy” life is when her child is safe, while someone else’s child is being hunted.
Decades of Burnt-Out Narratives
Everyone here carries PTSD. The ANC promised hope but delivered poverty, broken roads, blackouts, hunger, joblessness, a mountain of chaos topped with hopelessness, and wealth for a precious few. People don’t know what to do, so they fight who they’re told. Race divisions exist, sure, but economic vulnerability now splits communities within races. The most privileged of all have job security regardless of race, safety regardless of location, and financial prosperity regardless of education.
And those are the very ones telling everyone else that everything is fine, that there’s no need to worry about race-based laws, and that they’re not at risk, while always reminding us that “Elon’s father owned an emerald mine.”
Ava in Africa
Musician | Worship Leader
