Arrests Made In Brutal Farm Torture As South Africans Plan 3,000-Cross White House Vigil

Three suspects were detained after the brutal torture of a sleeping victim on a farm in South Africa early Saturday morning, as advocates against such farm attacks prepare a vigil to raise awareness in front of the White House in the United States next month.

The men were handed over to South African police after being detained by the private armed security group ECHO-1 Tactical Solutions following a tip detailing the plans of criminals an hour from Pretoria, the group said in a Sunday statement. (RELATED: Another Career Criminal Assaults Woman In Same City Where Iryna Zarutska Was Killed)

Although ECHO-1 said that they allegedly found stolen property with the suspects, they said it was a “challenge” to convince the local police that there had even been a crime.

However, a security member had made a “breakthrough” with one of the suspects, leading them to a farmhouse where they found the victim of torture and a robbery.

“There they found the victim hog-tied on his bed and bleeding profusely,” the statement said. “He was beaten, stabbed and tortured for an hour.”

A photo shared with the statement showed the bed covered in blood, as well as the three suspects being detained.

Emergency services arrived and were able to stabilize the victim as family members began to gather.

Security consultant and chief spokesperson for AfriForum Community Safety, Jacques Broodryk, wasn’t able to confirm the details but shared an incident report with the Daily Caller confirming that three suspects were detained and stolen goods were recovered as a case of house robbery was opened.

The report said that one suspect is still at large after stealing the victim’s pickup truck, while adding that “the victim suffered severe lacerations and bruises all over his body and parts of his lips were cut off.”

Torture is often what results from such South African farm attacks, with stories of severe beatings, mutilations, and execution-style killings often accompanied by more gruesome examples, such as using an iron to burn their victims or tying a victim who had already been shot to a car before dragging him on the road for over a mile.

Survivors also shared their stories with the Daily Caller in South Africa during a June 2025 investigation into President Donald Trump’s claims of genocide against a portion of the white South African minority, the Afrikaners. (RELATED: Investigating Farm Killings In South Africa — What We Saw)

Broodryk told the Caller during a ride-along with AfriForum during a late-night patrol that not only were Afrikaners disproportionately affected by such attacks, but the brutality against the white victims appeared to be on a whole other level.

Such security forces, such as AfriForum and ECHO-1, have become the norm in the Rainbow Nation due to mass corruption and the lack of government response, Broodryk told the Caller.

Between 2023 and 2024, South Africa had three times more private security personnel than police, the International Trade Administration estimated.

Out patrolling South African farms with @afriforum pic.twitter.com/mtZL2vCgTu

Trump’s White House has been one of the largest international advocates for the Afrikaners, signing a February 2025 executive order to cut off all aid to South Africa and to allow Afrikaners to be the only refugees that could be brought into the U.S.

“This Act follows countless government policies designed to dismantle equal opportunity in employment, education, and business, and hateful rhetoric and government actions fueling disproportionate violence against racially disfavored landowners,” the executive order said.

The order also pointed to the 2024 Expropriation Act, which allows the government to “seize ethnic minority Afrikaners’ agricultural property without compensation.”

The act was the topic of a week-long court case last week, with a decision determining the continued use of the expropriation law within the next several months, Ernst van Zyl, the head of public relations at AfriForum and an attendee of the hearings, told the Caller. He added that the conversations about the killings and the expropriation law being used against farmers are one and the same.

Trump had also faced criticism for conflating thousands of white crosses used to commemorate victims of farm attacks as the actual and final resting place of the victims, leading former 60 Minutes host Anderson Cooper to discount Trump’s claims of Afrikaner-targeted genocide as being victims of opportunistic crime.

However, a movement led by Lex Libertas and a coalition of other advocates against the farm attacks plan on moving the conversation to Washington, D.C., by placing 3,000 white crosses between the White House and the Capitol Building to commemorate victims of farm attacks of all races on Sept. 26.

Ernst Roets, the head of Lex Libertas, said Wednesday that the point of the White Cross project is to “make the crisis in South Africa unignorable” and then to channel that awareness to “support for sustainable solutions.”

Along with the vigil, the project will include a press conference where “victims of farm attacks, land invasions, racial exclusion and general state failure” will be able to share their testimonies, and the drafting of a petition calling for the U.S. to appoint a special envoy dedicated to working with South African minorities and for the decentralization of the South African government to allow for self-governance between the nation’s diverse peoples and tribes. (RELATED: EXCLUSIVE: Boer Leaders Say South Africa Will Not Learn From Trump’s Cutting Of AIDS Funding)

“And that is the essence of this whole White Cross project. It’s not merely to say, look how many people have been murdered, look at all these race laws, look at how threatened we are in terms of property laws,” Roets said. “But now that we recognize this, this is what ought to be done, or what could be done to address these issues, and to get international support for these solutions.”