A farmer who “mistakenly” sent a racist WhatsApp rant to a group of his farming community in the West Rand has blamed his malaria medication for threatening to kill the “k*****s” who broke into his home.
Abel Erasmus, 52, of Vleikop in Randfontein said he was heavily medicated on Christmas Eve when he posted a voice note in Afrikaans and repeatedly referred to black people as “houtkop k*****s”, whom he was going to shoot in the private parts if they ever set foot on his property again.
Listen:
He posted the offensive voicenote to a WhatsApp group known as "Koop and Verkoop" after his house was broken into while he was in Zambia where he works as a part-time electrical engineer.
He claimed two of his calves were stolen and his house ransacked.
“When I come back and k*****s sets foot in my yard, I am going to shoot him up,” he said in the voice note.
In the same message he could be heard bragging about having killed a “k*****r” before and that he would be returning to take them out again.
“I am tired of k*****s. I am going to take them out. I have already shot and killed one and I am coming.”
Arrogantly, he also gives away his name, surname and address, daring anyone to take him on. While many people in the group were left shocked, the WhatsApp group administrator immediately kicked him out.
A white farmer in the area who is part of the WhatsApp group, said Erasmus was called out by one of the members but refused to listen sending more racist messages. He said there was a group of racist farmers in the area who refused to recognise black people.
“I know him. He is part of a group of other racist farmers who insist on not recognising black people. They don’t want to form any security groupings with blacks or associate with them. He (Erasmus) uses people who work for him as he please and then discards of them
“What he said was totally unrelated to what the group is about, the group is about selling and buying, so none of [us] understood where it (racist rant) was coming from,” added the farmer.
Sowetan on Tuesday visited Erasmus’ home under the escort of the local community policing forum. He claimed he had no recollection of what happened as he was heavily-medicated for malaria and was shocked when someone played the voicenote back to him the next day.
“I was under medication. I did not know how the message landed in the group. I was talking to a person, the next moment a woman told me I spoke in a group. It wasn’t meant for that group,” he said
Erasmus claimed he was not racist and that he said what he said out of frustration over the theft of his cattle.
“I am not racist. I have many black friends, you can come I’ll show you,” he said.
One of the black farmers in the area, Mkhulu Skosana, said he was disturbed by the voicenote and feared for the safety of black people who worked in the area.
“My cows graze along in an open veld near where he stays, and what if one of them lands up in his yard and my herdman enters in an attempt to get it back? Will he not get killed? How are we supposed to trust that we will be safe? Should we wait for something to happen first?
“And the claim he made about having killed a black person... is that going to be ignored? In this area there are a lot of foreign workers who can easily go undetected.”
Erasmus denied having killed anyone and said: “I would be in jail by now.”
sibiyan@sowetan.co.za
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