Tucker Carlson interviews South African white farmer Leon Lotz about farm attacks and racial violence
Tucker Carlson speaks with Leon Lotz, a South African white farmer who describes firsthand experiences of farm attacks, the murder of his father-in-law, the rape of his wife, and the broader pattern of racially motivated violence against white farmers in post-apartheid South Africa.
Summary
Tucker Carlson opens with an extended commentary on the history of apartheid, its end in 1994, and what he argues has followed in the thirty-two years since — a reversal of racial discrimination rather than its elimination, with the ANC government enacting race-based laws and policies that disadvantage white South Africans. He plays clips from a May 2025 White House press conference in which President Trump confronted South African President Cyril Ramaphosa with footage of Julius Malema calling for the killing of white farmers, and then shows how CBS News and ABC News dismissed Trump's claims as false without investigation. Carlson also cites statements from the ADL and Wikipedia characterising concerns about white farm murders as white supremacist propaganda.
He then presents a lengthy interview with Leon Lotz, a white South African farmer, who describes in graphic detail the murder of his father-in-law, the rape of his wife, multiple attacks on his own farm, the systematic falsification of death certificates to conceal racially motivated killings, the collapse of hospitals and infrastructure, and the government's efforts to disarm white farmers while leaving them legally vulnerable if they defend themselves. Lotz also recounts his personal background — working as a farrier to independently save enough money to buy a farm after Nelson Mandela's release, without loans or inheritance — as context for his opposition to the ANC's policy of land expropriation without compensation. Toward the end of the interview, Lotz and Carlson discuss Orania, a self-governing Afrikaner community in the Northern Cape, which Lotz presents as the only viable model for the long-term survival of white South Africans, and which he says the ANC and Malema are attacking as racist.
Key Takeaways
FULL TRANSCRIPT
Tucker Carlson's opening commentary on apartheid and its aftermath
Tucker Carlson: If you remember the 1980s, you may remember the anti-apartheid movement — or as it was called in the United States, the anti-apartheid movement. Apartheid was a long-standing system in South Africa under which the white minority controlled the political system. To some extent it was a system of racial separation, where black residents lived in certain parts of the country in what were called townships, while white residents lived in their own cities, and there was legal separation between the two groups. It was a form of racial discrimination. As noted, this system had persisted for many decades. In the United States, beginning in the 1970s and accelerating through the 1980s, this system was deeply hated by activists, particularly on university campuses.
So if you think about the protests that erupted on university campuses over the past twenty years against this system or that — pick one: East Timor, Darfur, or whatever it was that enraged civil rights advocates, activists, and radicals in the 1980s — they were enraged by apartheid. When you visited universities, particularly the famous Brown University, you would see shanty towns in the courtyards of many campuses, where students built huts and modest shacks representing the misery in which black South African lived. It was difficult to defend apartheid. It was racial discrimination — no question about it.
And so over time, the anti-apartheid movement, not just in the United States but throughout the West, had its effect. It is worth noting that political figures in the United States did not oppose the anti-apartheid protests on campuses — they supported and encouraged them, unlike the anti-Israel protests that erupted on campuses a few years ago. Nobody was imprisoned for opposing apartheid on an Ivy League campus. Nobody had their green card revoked or was deported. No, the American ruling class fully supported the campus protesters. And again, they were protesting something that was clearly unjust. Apartheid is always unjust because a person does not choose their race.
In any case, through sustained pressure from the United States, Britain, and the West generally, apartheid fell in 1994. It happened peacefully. The white government handed over power in an election. On the other side, of course, was a famous figure at the time named Nelson Mandela, who had been a revolutionary. He spent decades in prison for attempting to blow up a train, but by 1994 he had become a symbol of reconciliation, peace, and power-sharing between black and white South African. Those elections took place in 1994, the world breathed a sigh of relief, and pointed to South Africa saying: "Things will work out. It will be wonderful." Then the West, largely, stopped paying attention to what was happening in South Africa. That deliberate indifference lasted for thirty-two years.
But what happened in South Africa? Well, a great many things, and none of them were good. The economy collapsed. The country did not, by the way, become less racist. Over the past thirty years, the South African government — run by the same political party that came to power in 1994, the African National Congress — has enacted race-based laws in roughly the same number as the apartheid government enacted. In some respects they are more brutal. A significant proportion of the white population has emigrated to New Zealand, Australia, the United Kingdom, the United States, and Canada — to English-speaking countries around the world. If you speak to any of them, they will tell you they left because they felt there was no opportunity in South Africa due to the colour of their skin.
At the same time, the economy and infrastructure have collapsed. So what existed in South Africa after thirty-two years since the end of apartheid was the same degree of racism, but with a severe shortage of electricity. Perhaps that was not a victory. But what is interesting is that most of those who called for the end of apartheid in the United States and Europe were not prepared to acknowledge what had happened — partly because they were implicated in it. Things did not improve in South Africa. They got worse. Racism worsened — the very thing they had rightly opposed in the apartheid system. Everything was turned upside down.
Trump's White House press conference and the media's response
Now, let us move quickly from 1994 to May of last year and the White House. This was part of the Trump presidency, when the president was still trying to fulfil his campaign promises before abandoning them entirely in favour of waging war on Iran. But at that time, in May 2025, President Trump was doing what he had signalled during his campaign — speaking publicly about racism against white people, a racism that is pervasive, and in some cases codified, including in the United States. In many respects it is the only institutional racism still permitted in the Western world. Trump had indicated during his candidacy that he would be the only person courageous enough to speak about it, on the principle that all racism is wrong — not because harming a particular group is bad, but because harming any group is bad. It is a universal principle that applies to everyone.
So in May of last year, Donald Trump held this press conference. Watch.
Donald Trump: We have a lot of people who feel they are being persecuted and are coming to the United States. So we are accepting immigrants from many places if we feel there is persecution or genocide. And we have had a lot of these immigrants. I have to tell you, Mr. President, we have seen tremendous numbers of people, especially since they saw this. They are mostly white farmers. And they are fleeing South Africa. Sorry — dim the lights. Dim the lights and run this. It is right behind you, Johan.
[Video clip voice]: This government cannot do anything. Whether you are here or not, people will occupy the land. We do not need your permission, not the president's, not anyone's.
Donald Trump: These are articles published over the last few days. Death of people. Death. Death. Death. Death. Horrible death. Death. I don't know.
[Reporter]: But you know there are people talking about this.
Donald Trump: Africans fleeing because of violence and racist laws. And that is all I am saying. I will show you these. So when you ask what do I want to do? I don't know what to do. Look at this. A white South African couple says they were violently attacked. But the fake media in this country does not talk about it. They don't want to talk about it. They are now forced to talk about it, but they refuse. This topic would not even be on the table.
Tucker Carlson: The man sitting next to him is Cyril Ramaphosa, the president of South Africa. The clips Trump showed — he showed two clips — featured a well-known political figure, aligned with the ANC, named Julius Malema, publicly calling for the killing of white people. Calling for the killing of anyone on the basis of race is a crime in South Africa, which has hate crime laws, but he has never been punished for it and continues to do so to this day. Again, he acts on behalf of the government run by the man you just saw sitting next to Donald Trump.
So Donald Trump, in his not entirely clear way — if you were not familiar with the background, you might not have understood exactly what he was talking about — was attempting to draw the world's attention to the reality of South Africa. And the reality is that this situation has long been a racist one. The government treats people differently based on the colour of their skin, and if your skin colour is "wrong" in South Africa, you may be harmed, raped, or killed. This is an undeniable fact, and yet it is contested in the United States.
What is notable is not Trump's statement itself — though no president has come close to saying anything similar, and that is to his credit. But the reactions to Trump's statement revealed everything about how a system like this arises in South Africa, and why we still have a version of it here in the United States — a system in which white people face structural disadvantages in employment, university admissions, and government contracting. That system still exists in the United States as it has for decades, and everyone knows it. But no one is permitted to speak about it, or people feel intimidated from noticing it, because American media, like others, deploy accusations of racism whenever anyone points out that racism against white people exists.
Here, for example, is how CBS News covered the press conference you just watched.
CBS News anchor: President Trump has halted the acceptance of all refugees in the United States except for one group — the white Afrikaner minority that led South Africa's brutal apartheid system. The first group has already arrived in America, claiming to be victims of violence and discrimination. Claims of white genocide are often promoted by far-right groups.
CBS News academic: There is no evidence for this, and there never has been. This is fertile ground for white people.
CBS News reporter: And everyone is joking that they were surprised to wake up and suddenly find that going outside had become extremely dangerous because of what is called white genocide. So there is a humorous side and a depressing side. As for the Afrikaner farmers, most of them will say that "Uncle Donnie," as they call President Trump, is being fed a false narrative.
Tucker Carlson: So there are two things to learn from that CBS News report. First, that none of this is happening, and if you believe it is happening, you are a racist. Second, that apartheid was brutal — in other words, when white people were in power, they were brutal. The implication, of course — and someone will say it explicitly — is that any brutality visited upon white people over the past thirty-two years is deserved because it is revenge for what other white people did thirty-two years ago.
Now, CBS News has no way of knowing any of this. That was not a CBS News employee as you saw. CBS News does not have a bureau in South Africa. That was a contributing correspondent, a freelancer hired by CBS. As for the Afrikaner academic — is he a mainstream voice in South Africa? No, he is not. And the claim — if you asked a white farmer in South Africa, how many white farmers did CBS News survey on this question? As far as we know, none. There is nothing new in the news report you just watched. It is propaganda designed to intimidate you and prevent you from asking follow-up questions such as: Is there racial discrimination against white people in South Africa? Have white farmers been killed simply for being white? And if so, how many? These questions are left unanswered, because if they were asked, the answers would confirm that everything the president alluded to is entirely correct.
CBS News was not alone in doing this — and it is now run, by the way, by Barry Weiss, a professional promoter of racial advocacy who has dedicated his career to protecting the interests of one group — a group he describes, in his own words, as "my people" — while any attempt by other groups to do the same is immediately suppressed. You will notice that. And in case CBS News was not alone, here is ABC News's reaction to the same press conference.
ABC News anchor: Tonight, an extraordinary scene in the Oval Office. President Trump ambushes the president of South Africa with false claims that his country is committing genocide against white farmers. President Cyril Ramaphosa said he came to the White House to discuss trade.
Cyril Ramaphosa: We are here essentially to reset the relationship between the United States and South Africa.
ABC News anchor: But Trump had other ideas. The president insists that white farmers in South Africa are being persecuted and killed on a wide scale. Unsubstantiated claims amplified by Elon Musk, who was born in South Africa. There is a crime problem in South Africa, but there is no evidence it is racially motivated or rises to the level of genocide. White people make up only 7% of the country's population but own the vast majority of its farmland.
Tucker Carlson: So again, this is not news. There is no information — despite the small graphic at the bottom designed to inform you that white people own a lot of land. That is justice, apparently. But it begins by describing the president's comments as an ambush of the poor president of South Africa, who came here trying to establish a new relationship with the United States, and Trump ambushes him. In reality, this same president, Cyril Ramaphosa, has said anti-white things publicly for many years. He pointed, not long ago, to neighbouring Zimbabwe, which actually did commit genocide against its white population. Almost none remain in the country — their land was stolen, they were allowed to be killed by mobs — and he said: "This is a model for South Africa." This president, whom they are defending as the victim of an ambush, has stated repeatedly and publicly that his plan is to seize not only the real estate and land of white residents, but their personal property as well, without compensation. This is the official position of his party. In fact, as the ANC expresses it, compensation will be "nil" — meaning nothing.
So there are genuine questions here that might be worth investigating if you were a news organisation. But instead, ABC News, like CBS News, dismisses everything Trump says as a lie without disproving it — simply asserting that it is a lie. It is a lie. White people are bad. That is the position of every news organisation in the United States, and has been for decades — and not just the position of groups you might have thought were committed to protecting human rights.
The ADL, Wikipedia, and the framing of white genocide claims
Here is the ADL's statement on claims of white genocide in South Africa, and we quote: "For decades, white supremacists around the world have been among the most ardent supporters of the white institutional dominance of South Africa's apartheid system. They have expressed deep resentment at the dismantling of this racist policy and at the progress South African have made in their pursuit of racial equality and reconciliation."
Remember that the ADL is an organisation that claims to exist to protect Jewish people in the world. So why is it attacking white people in South Africa who say they are victims of institutional racism — which they are — and of organised violence — which they also are? Why would it be in the ADL's interest to attack them for this reason? What exactly have they done wrong? How are they considered antisemitic simply because they do not want to be killed on their farms? They did not explain that. But the statement continued: "White supremacists have exploited some farm-related violence in South Africa since the end of apartheid to promote a propaganda campaign that exaggerates and distorts the situation, suggesting that white people in South Africa are under threat."
Again — what interest could the ADL have in attacking white people in South Africa who claim to be killed, especially given that there are hundreds of documented deaths? This is not speculation or conspiracy theory. Every one of them was killed by a black South African. These are domestic, racially motivated crimes, and the testimony of virtually all survivors confirms this. So why is it in the ADL's interest not only to deny that this is happening, but to attack the survivors and their families? You need to think about this for a moment.
Here is Wikipedia's response to what it calls this racial conspiracy theory: "White genocide is a political myth based on pseudoscience, fabricated history, and racial hatred, driven by a psychological panic often called 'white extinction anxiety.'" So let us look at the publicly available demographic statistics for the largest majority-white countries in Europe and North America, and ask a simple question: Is the proportion of white people increasing or decreasing? Let us say over the past fifty years — has it risen or fallen? In fact, it has not merely fallen; it has reached its lowest recorded levels. The white share of the population in the United States has dropped from approximately 90% to below half over sixty years. Is that "white extinction anxiety"? No, those are facts. So again, it is not enough to pretend this is not happening. Wikipedia, like the ADL, CBS News, and ABC News, feels a moral obligation to attack anyone who notices what is happening. The facts themselves are racist.
As Wikipedia states: "White people are not in danger of extinction or threatened with genocide. This claim is intended to justify commitment to a white nationalist agenda and to support calls for violence." Merely observing is hatred. Observing is violence.
So underlying all of this are two questions. First: Is this actually happening? Would it not be interesting to know the truth? Rather than dismissing it as a violent act, it matters to notice the rapes and killings. Would it not be easier to speak to people in South Africa and learn about their experiences? To do some reporting on the subject? The second question is: Is it permissible to assault and harm people because of their race? And of course, from the perspective of the ADL, the anonymous authors of Wikipedia, ABC, CBS, NBC, and most American news organisations — yes, it is permissible under certain circumstances. Not all races are equal, and not all deaths are alike. The death of some groups, and the oppression of some others, is completely unacceptable, while the death and oppression of other groups is morally justified.
So it is worth saying plainly: this is wrong. This is the definition of a racist, distorted worldview. The only acceptable view is that all human beings are equal in value. It is a universal view. Not every person is identical in ability, but all are equal in value. It is always wrong, regardless of colour, race, culture, or language, to kill innocent people — completely unacceptable. This includes Palestinians in Gaza, white people in the Transvaal, all Jews and Filipinos, and every human being. It is always wrong to harm innocent people. This includes harming people because of how they were born, which is not a crime but an accident.
So you should know that anyone who denies the existence of objective reality reveals their true intentions — that killing some people is permissible. You should know that.
Introduction of Leon Lotz
In the meantime, we thought it would be useful to speak to someone who actually lives in South Africa — a real South African farmer. So we invited him to our home and spent a long time with him. His name is Leon Lotz. We will show you the interview we conducted with him two days ago. We warn you before watching it that it is one of the most painful conversations we have ever had. It is shocking. We believe every word of it, but you can judge for yourselves.
Leon, thank you very much for what you have done. In the United States, we are told that farm murders are not real, and that people who talk about farm invasions and the killing of white farmers in South Africa are delusional, making up stories, and are racists. Is this real?
Leon Lotz's firsthand account
Leon Lotz: I can speak on behalf of myself and everyone I know. I have personally been through a farm murder experience. My father-in-law was shot and killed in front of my wife and children. My wife was raped at the same time by one of the neighbours. So I moved from that farm to another farm to get away from the crime scene. I moved to the Karoo where I thought it was safer. We were there for a few months, then our next-door neighbour was killed. His wife survived. They shot her twice. I bought a farm from a lady named Marlies Daniels and Fred in Middelburg in the Eastern Cape. Her parents were executed on their knees — shot in the back of their heads. Two years ago, a man who rented a farm in the same area was slaughtered like an animal. I have one here as well. I don't know if the camera can pick it up.
Tucker Carlson: I can see it. Where did that come from?
Leon Lotz: Another attack I actually survived. There are many attacks I have survived — three real attacks — and this one was almost forgotten, but I was stabbed deeply in my leg on this side. I survived that one. So when you are attacked, you have to stay away from the police. Because if you report it, or if they catch someone, the first thing that will happen to you is that an assault case will be opened against you. They will lock you up first. Then hopefully you will get out within two or three days, depending on your connections with lawyers or what will happen. And most of these cases — the murder cases — are not investigated. The case dockets are empty. We know many of them. We can prove it. It is not about the government or anything like that, but they are not investigated. In some of these cases, the finger points directly at the police. The Brand docket is empty. In Steynsburg, there is nothing.
The other thing they lie about is death certificates. I have the death certificates, and I have photos for you. My father-in-law's death certificate — I forced them to write "killed" on it. In the end they wrote "with great struggle." They wrote "gunshot wound to the abdomen." Other death certificates of people I know who were killed say "unnatural causes." So they do not investigate the murders. Nothing happens. How do you prove statistically that we are being killed? There are only about 30,000 white farmers left in South Africa.
Tucker Carlson: How many were there in 1994 when the government changed?
Leon Lotz: I believe the number was over 100,000. I am not certain of the exact figures, but it must have been over 100,000 farmers.
Tucker Carlson: And there are 30,000 now.
Leon Lotz: The number keeps growing — of those who are gone. We who own small farms like mine are the first to be targeted. We have excellent farmers in South Africa, truly skilled farmers under these difficult circumstances. I salute some of those farmers who produce food. We produce enough food under these conditions that we can export it. So to accuse us of lying — that is what our ambassador here in America, Mr. Roelof Meyer, is doing. He is a white South African and will speak on our behalf. I would like Mr. Meyer to tell the truth. He should be arrested for what they have done to human beings, even within the National Party. He should be arrested. Let him close his eyes now and say we are not being killed. Come with us and we will show you the truth. Come and live with me for three days.
Mr. Rupert said when he was here with Mr. Trump that he sleeps with his doors open. Mr. Rupert is a billionaire.
Tucker Carlson: That is Johan Rupert.
Leon Lotz: Yes. I am not angry with him. I also breed racehorses, and Johan breeds horses too. So I actually need him in that field. Without him, we would not have a racehorse industry. But he cannot sleep with his doors open if he lives like me. He has all the protection with him. We do not have that luxury. If you drive in South Africa, wherever you go, you will see anti-theft measures, barbed wire fences, steel fences, alarm systems, cameras, dogs, and so on. When we drove through here last night, it was like a miracle. There are wooden houses. There are cars parked outside. We cannot leave cars outside. They will break into those cars and steal the battery, the tyres, or the rims. They will kill you for a car. The insurance we pay to be safe in our homes costs thousands of rand per month. My insurance costs 20,000 rand per month. I have insurance that guarantees they will come back and break into my home again. I have had three attacks on my farm. I forgot one of them. It is a way of life. The older I get, the more tired I am of all this nonsense. I am tired of my own people. And of a British person sitting in England — Pete Quaickmire, Roelof Meyer, Rhoda Landman, whoever they are in your country — saying we are not being killed. They cannot deny it, because it is the biggest fraud in the world — that it is not mentioned on death certificates. These murder cases are not investigated.
When they catch the killers — the person who killed my father-in-law — the police said he killed 23 people. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, 146 years. He was from Mozambique, a black man.
Tucker Carlson: He was not even an immigrant?
Leon Lotz: Yes — Mario Gonzo. About a month ago I started looking for him. Then they came back and said they were very embarrassed, but he was released after a year. So when you are imprisoned in South Africa, you serve a maximum of 10% of your sentence, then you are released.
Tucker Carlson: After killing your father-in-law.
Leon Lotz: Yes, murder. There was a person who worked for me who stabbed his own people. He is now in prison for three years. None of his victims died. My father-in-law died. He raped my wife. He served a year and was released. How is this possible? They conduct no investigations. You cannot reach any conclusion. If you do not present your arguments, you will be imprisoned first. No — we are being killed. The difference between the murders committed against us and the Cape Flats murders is that in the Cape Flats, the perpetrators are from the same racial group. If I speak about racial groups, I know the world will understand. We have black people, we have coloured people, we have white people in South Africa. Then we have immigrants from Mozambique and Zimbabwe — all of Zimbabwe is in South Africa, and so is Mozambique. There are people from Malawi in South Africa. So from time to time there is xenophobia and they are expelled. But I do not know how far they get before they come back again. I think these illegal immigrants will build houses, and when enough are built, they will be expelled, and the houses will be taken for free, and they continue with their lives.
But I believe the difference between the Cape Flats murders is that the same racial group kills its own people. We are not killed by white people — we are killed by black people. Malema will stand there and say: "Kill the Boer, kill the farmer." Boer is farmer in Afrikaans. He is essentially issuing an order to kill us. They are not stealing. It is not a failed robbery. They come to kill us. They do not steal anything. They will take weapons, urinate on us, defecate on us, rape us, put their faeces on us. The main thing is that when they do these things, they will produce their faeces and spread them throughout the house and on the people they have killed. That is their method — to dehumanise us, whatever they do.
Tucker Carlson: Yes, that is their method, and they will urinate on them. Now, among the 33,000 farmers remaining in South Africa — they represent our racial group. There are more than 30,000 white people in South Africa, but there are only about 30,000 white farmers actively farming. It is impossible for us as white farmers to stand up and sing "Kill the worker, kill whoever, kill the black people."
Leon Lotz: We do not do that. We do not kill them. But if you open social media, you will see black people reporting that we as white farmers are killing hundreds of thousands of black people. Where? Where do we do that? It is impossible for us to sing like Malema. This is everywhere, and he did it again last Saturday — "Kill the farmer, kill the Boer." Politically, this is true for the ANC. We cannot raise an old flag that carries hate speech. But this man can order people to kill, as he did with some of those here with me. They were singing "Kill the farmer, kill the Boer," then they attacked us. So another racial group will come and kill us white people. White people do not want to kill white farmers. There are white people being killed. This must be — I do not know where we are going with them, but there are criminals in every society. But in a civilised society, how can you do things like this? How can you heat a clothes iron, and when you rape a woman, burn her with that iron on the inside of her thighs, on her face? While you rape her, you bite pieces of her lip. And you continue for days in a shack. I know people who disconnected washing machine pipes while they tied the wife to a chair. The husband had to watch. The wife had to watch him. Then they pushed the pipe down his throat. They boiled the water and poured it down his throat. Then Roelof Meyer will say this will not happen. Our own president now calls himself sovereign. Now that the American government has imposed visa sanctions — what does this sovereignty mean to him? It seems Jan van Riebeeck arrived in 1625. So all the coloured people became poor. I was born in 1966. I bought my first farm with money I saved from my work as a farrier. I put it in a box. I bought a farm after Nelson Mandela was released. Now they want to take my property for free, without paying me for it. No compensation.
Tucker Carlson: You were a farrier — you shod horses?
Leon Lotz: Yes. That is how I saved the money to eventually buy a farm. I did not inherit it. I did not get a loan. I was not eligible. So now they want to take it.
Tucker Carlson: So you did not work for anyone. You did not take your farm from anyone.
Leon Lotz: I have never killed anyone. I have never taken any farm from anyone. I bought a farm that had been on the market for three years in the new South Africa, after Nelson Mandela was released. So why did no black person buy it?
Tucker Carlson: Do you think they will try to take it from you because you are white?
Leon Lotz: I think we will inevitably lose our farms. I do not think it will take long. This is what Nelson Mandela was demanding. This is what they are doing. They are hiding this from the entire world. We produce food. We are not here for the political side. I have nothing to do with the political side. I just want to live freely. I cannot carry a weapon all the time.
The murder of Leon Lotz's father-in-law — a detailed account
Tucker Carlson: Can you start from the beginning of the story you told earlier about the killing of your father-in-law? What happened?
Leon Lotz: My father-in-law was raising pigs. He had surgery on his navel. My wife went there to look after the farm while he was in hospital. He came out on Friday. I had a horse racing at Turffontein racecourse in Johannesburg. On Saturday, I entered this horse in the race so I could get to my father-in-law, and I had no excuse to go there otherwise. The farm is about 600 kilometres from Turffontein. I left at four in the morning on Saturday. The horse ran in the race — I think it came last. I returned to my father-in-law's farm and unloaded the horse. At eight o'clock in the evening, my wife — a very thin woman, she weighed about 50 or 54 kilograms — said to me: "Don't you want to go back to the farm? They may have stolen the sheep or broken through the fences or the house while we were away." Under normal circumstances, my father-in-law would have jumped up first and said: "You are not going back by car. You came here this morning and have not slept. You will stay until the next morning." God must have saved me. I got up from the table, took the horse box, loaded the horse, and went back. I arrived around three o'clock. Immediately after I arrived, the phone rang. It was my mother-in-law. All I heard from her was: "They shot Dad. They shot Dad." And I heard that bastard screaming in the background, swearing at her, calling us white dogs and white bitches and everything like that. Then everything cut off. The phone went dead. I was 600 kilometres away.
My two daughters were there. The youngest was about three years old. My son was there. And one of the horse riders was there as well. If Gavin had not been a jockey, and if they had not thought he was a child, they would have shot him too. The first question they asked was: "Are there any men in the house?" They wanted to shoot my son's dog — a small Jack Russell. He had to use his shoelace to tie the horse and close the dog's mouth. They tied him up, and he managed to undo the rope to get a pipe from the cupboard to protect himself. But he could not get the pipe out of the cupboard. I think God saved him that way too. But yes, they heard him, and while they were busy with Adele, they were moving around my father-in-law's room. They had not shot him yet.
Adele told me that the worst fear she ever felt was for my son, who was about 16 years old at the time. Yes, he was 16. Adele said: "They were pointing the gun at his head, and they were not sure whether they were going to shoot my son or not." In the end, they went to my father-in-law's room. They closed the door and told us to be quiet. Then they opened the door. They must have been in the house before. My son said they opened the door, then took the gun and pressed the light switch, and when my father-in-law got up, they shot him in the abdomen. Right in front of my son. Then they attacked my mother-in-law and threw her off the bed. My son had a pistol. They had to open the safe. He managed to hide the pistol. And he told me: "Dad, I could have shot him in the back." Then he came closer, but I did not know who was with my mother and sister — what would happen if I shot and they heard? Fortunately, he did not shoot the man.
To be killed is one thing, but to take a life is something completely different. This is not our nature, this is not who we are. We are Christians — we do not take lives. We can protect ourselves, and Malema should know that. And Roelof Meyer and Ramaphosa — you will push us to the absolute limit until we break. We still have something to lose, and that is in your favour. But my youngest daughter started crying, and then the other woman covered her. Imagine the feeling of a mother covering her three-year-old child to protect her after finding her.
I drove back. I called my only black farm worker who had worked for me for a long time. His name is Peters. He started working for me when I started farming. To this day he still works for me. He is like a member of the family. He is a coloured man. He has done more for me than any white person I know. That is how I called him. He packed my bags, made me tea, put me in the car, and called me every half hour to check on me. I passed through one of the small towns and stopped at a church on a Sunday morning. I asked a priest there to pray for me. I do not even know his name. Without that, I would not have been able to return to where I was. That day I drove for between 12 and 20 hours straight. I passed through a toll gate on the way. I had been in the army and practised martial arts — there was nothing in the world that frightened me. I was so frightened I could not breathe. When I passed through the toll gate, I was about 10 or 15 kilometres away. And I felt as if God was absent. He was no longer there. And I felt inside me that someone had been raped. That is what they do.
I arrived home, and my wife was standing outside. I have said this many times — she looked like a wet chicken that had stood in the rain. That was Adele. Adele's nickname in Afrikaans was "Kriek" — a name in English cricket. That was because of her short stature and thinness. After I finished the call with my mother, I called my friend Wallace Storm. He called the police. Without that, I do not know what would have happened. But I took a few minutes before I could think to call anyone. I was so terrified I could not think. So when I arrived and saw my wife standing there, I had no words. You cannot pray. You do not know what to do. And in that moment, you still feel the hatred with which they hate us. And if sovereignty means to this ANC government — which is screaming this week that my blood and my family's blood must be spilled because of the widespread poverty in South Africa — then they must hold the old National Party accountable, and people like Roelof Meyer, H.F. de Klerk, Piet Quaickmire, Ramaphosa, Zuma, and Malema. How many years have they been running this country? Thirty years? Why is my wife raped and my family killed so they can throw a party that I pay for with my life because of poverty? Then they will say you are killed because you mistreat your farm workers. That is the worst lie in the world. If those workers were in the way, they would shoot them too. As they do. I want to repeat it: we are killed by another racial group. In the Cape Flats, and in all the murders in the country not committed against white farmers, that same racial group killed its own people. We are not killed by white people — we are killed by black people.
Tucker Carlson: Why?
Leon Lotz: I do not know. I think they hate us because we own farms. Politically, they say we stole everything from them. I remember when I was in the army, one of the ANC's goals was to destroy the economy. Because they said if they destroyed the economy and made the whole country chaotic, they would stay in power. And that is exactly what they are doing now. They are destroying the entire economy because if there is nowhere for people to go, they will remain in control forever. They do not care about poverty. But how can 30,000 people be blamed for the poverty of millions in this country? How can 30,000 people care for millions of people from Malawi, Mozambique, Zimbabwe, and South Africa? How is this possible?
The collapse of South Africa's infrastructure and legal system
Tucker Carlson: What is the most productive output of white farmers in South Africa?
Leon Lotz: I used to sell fertiliser for Gavilon in the United States. I visited the United States when I worked for Gavilon. I visited many places around the world, including Australia, though I have not yet visited Europe. I cannot specify the amount in bushels, but if you are a South African farmer growing maize, the average yield of a South African farmer using a centre pivot irrigation system, even in the worst weather conditions, is 16 tonnes of maize. So we are productive farmers. We buy all our tractors from the United States and elsewhere. We work according to standards. We produce 80 to 100 tonnes of potatoes. For wheat, we produce 8 to 10 tonnes. In dry areas, we can grow soybeans, and production can reach two tonnes, depending on the weather. We have outstanding farmers. Our livestock production matches the best farms in the world. We do not need to step back. We are at the top. The best in the world.
South African farmers receive no government subsidies as many farmers in other parts of the world do. They must arrange their own financing and work on their own projects. There is absolutely no government support. They prevent us from importing fertiliser directly. They have all these rules and regulations that prevent direct importation.
Tucker Carlson: Does South Africa produce its own fertiliser?
Leon Lotz: We were completely self-sufficient in fertiliser. Now we are not. The Sasol company we had stopped producing fertiliser — the government took it over. We had a phosphorus plant in Phalaborwa that was moved to Richards Bay, and it has not produced any granules this season yet. Nothing. They stopped working for six months. We have to import everything. We are under enormous pressure now because of the ongoing wars. We cannot get fertiliser. Ships must come from Russia and everywhere. With all of this, farmers are still producing. We are being killed. Everything is against us from the outside world, and yet we are still producing. We are still here.
Tucker Carlson: But South Africa was completely self-sufficient in fertiliser.
Leon Lotz: We were self-sufficient in everything except urea. Importing urea was always cheaper than manufacturing it locally.
Tucker Carlson: But the government destroyed that entire industry within thirty years. Nothing is left.
Leon Lotz: Nothing is left.
Tucker Carlson: That is horrifying. Why do you think farmers are the target — these 30,000 farmers, mostly white but many Afrikaans-speaking? Why are they the target of this violence when they make up such a small proportion of the white population?
Leon Lotz: I think the ANC government is exploiting this situation. They wanted to convince the uneducated that we are the cause of their poverty. And they succeeded — these people believe we are the cause of their poverty. If you drive a car, they will think it belongs to them. They have destroyed our schools. They have destroyed our hospitals. There are no longer hospitals in the small towns.
Tucker Carlson: Really?
Leon Lotz: They look like pigsties. You cannot go there. There are no hospitals. I had to transport my sick wife. I had to drive 800 kilometres to the nearest hospital, and 350 kilometres to the nearest hospital. If you have a heart attack and there is no helicopter to transport you, you will not survive. No hospitals are left. No doctors are left. People are leaving.
Tucker Carlson: What is the nearest hospital to you?
Leon Lotz: The nearest hospital to me is either Bloemfontein, 350 kilometres away, or Port Elizabeth, 350 kilometres away. And if there is no space in those hospitals, you have to go to Cape Town.
Tucker Carlson: How far is that?
Leon Lotz: 890 kilometres from me. So I made that trip for three and a half years after the murder. Every two months.
Tucker Carlson: Why were you going every two months?
Leon Lotz: After the murder, my mother-in-law got cancer and died. And shortly after the murder, I noticed my wife was ill. She had an HIV test done. Fortunately, she did not have HIV. But she was first diagnosed with rheumatoid arthritis, then with leukaemia. And in the last two months of her life, she was also diagnosed with fibromyalgia. And if we go back to the symptoms of these diseases, extreme fear and anxiety — extreme fear and anxiety — is a confirmed cause of them, as is diabetes. My friend Sean was attacked while sleeping and stabbed. Sean now has diabetes.
Tucker Carlson: He was stabbed while sleeping?
Leon Lotz: Yes. They entered his house, tied him and his wife up, and started stabbing him. He did not wake up at first. Sheila was awake. They tied her, put socks in her mouth, tied her gag, bound her to silence, then started stabbing him. They will not ask any questions. If they enter and you are a man, they will kill you. Because they want to get rid of you.
Tucker Carlson: Did they stab his wife?
Leon Lotz: No, fortunately not. After the crime, we waited four days for forensic experts to arrive and take fingerprints. During that time, my children were there. There were animals outside that needed to be cared for, fed, and watered. Then we had to wait for the forensic experts to get some fingerprints. In the meantime, it was not possible to clean the blood that was everywhere. The children had to walk over it. It was not possible to fix those children. It was not possible to return them to normal. When I was seventeen, when I joined the army, I had not experienced what we experience now. We had a regular army in South Africa. We were able to protect ourselves. But I had not experienced what I experience now. You can undergo psychological treatment and other things. They can pray for you. And you can pray for yourself. And then you will see on social media or hear that someone will call you to tell you about another murder. No one publishes it in the news anymore — it is hidden. No one talks about it. Those around you will talk about it, then someone else will wish it does not happen to you, then you will post it on social media. Statistically, we do not kill you — in the Cape Flats, hundreds of children are killed. We come back to the same point: the same racial group that killed them.
Tucker Carlson: White people did not kill them.
Leon Lotz: No — their own people did. We waited four days. After that, I had to go to a government mortuary. I think in the United States, if a murder occurs, there is a specific mortuary that investigates and to which bodies are transferred. In South Africa, the government mortuaries are in the same locations I had to go to in Sebokeng. I had to drive ten kilometres to that place, which is definitely not safe if you are white. It is not a place you want to be. They will kill you if you enter. You cannot stop. You have to go, get there, and get out. When I finally arrived, there was a sign on the wall. I was sitting there crying. The sign read: "No one will be held here for more than three months." Now I wish my ears would tell me from the pulpit that I am lying. I could not understand what I was reading because I was crying and frightened and emotionally exhausted. They made me sit there for two hours, maybe more, before I could see the body. Because you have to acknowledge that this is the person's place. You have to sign all the papers.
Finally, a black man came. He was chewing gum. Then he fell onto a chair on the other side of the counter. He was leaning back like this on the beach, and he blew a bubble with his gum. In the meantime, they were talking and laughing, and I do not know what jokes they were exchanging, or whether they were talking about me, or whatever they were doing. It was extremely disrespectful. If you have not experienced racism, go there and tell me you have not. When the bubble burst, he asked me: "What happened to the deceased?" I have never been treated with such insult in my life. After a heated argument, we finally went to the body. I remember the man from the Doves organisation who was transporting the bodies. I looked at him and asked: "Is the Lord really there?" He said: "Yes." I said: "How? Because you see this every day." He told me: "What you see here is not the Lord — it is the devil." And I apologise for saying this. While I was sitting there, I was looking at him and thinking to myself: "How can you do a job like this? Why don't you go to university or college and study something? How can you do something like this?" Without these people, I do not know what we would do in South Africa. I must salute them.
Then he stood up and said to me: "If you are not afraid of bodies, or if you are afraid of them, look at the back of my head. Do not look to the side." The situation in South Africa is that the refrigerators in government mortuaries do not work. There are too many bodies anyway. There is no room for them. They do not come to collect the bodies. And this applies to black people too — because they are Zimbabweans and Malawians, whoever is here. They do not take the dead. They leave them there. So by law, and I think they are obliged to keep them there for three months. While I was there, there was not enough space for those bodies.
Tucker Carlson: Why do they not take the bodies of their dead?
Leon Lotz: It is cheaper. It is too expensive. So they leave them there. That is poverty. And I must be blamed for that because I am a white farmer.
Tucker Carlson: That is not just poverty. Some of the poorest people in the world take the bodies of their dead.
Leon Lotz: This happens in South Africa.
Tucker Carlson: There is something else going on. It is disturbing. The bodies were lying there.
Leon Lotz: I walked through a corridor and we turned. And there were the bodies. I walked among them. The bodies were lying on both sides, covered with blue covers that covered half of them, and they were naked. And while they were warming them, or I do not know what they were doing, they were turning them. Putting them in the refrigerator, then flipping them. My father-in-law was lying on the table there, naked. The fear was still visible on his face. I am not afraid of bodies, but what I saw was horrifying. My brother fell off a motorcycle, and I went through the same experience. My brother had long hair and died in a motorcycle accident — not a murder, just a regular accident — but his hair was completely shaved. They split his head open and put stitches very far apart. I could make better barbed wire fencing than they did. And my question to them is: if you are recording the cause of death on the death certificate as natural, why are you cutting the bodies and conducting any forensic investigation? You are not opening a murder case, so why are you splitting those bodies? Why do we have no say?
As for my father-in-law, he had a long beard. There was blood in his mouth and on his cheeks and nose. They split his head from the bottom to here. And the stitches were far apart — I do not know, about 5 centimetres. The sight was horrifying and degrading. Why must I go to a government mortuary and witness a body being treated like an animal? Then transfer it to a decent place for burial, a place where we lay the dead to rest? If my wife or daughter or son had to go there and see a body, I do not know — perhaps we would have died sooner. After signing those papers, you have to go and obtain a death certificate. You arrive at the Department of Home Affairs and stand in a queue all day. There is not a single white employee — only black people. You stand in a queue to get anything, even identity cards. I do not know what else you get. You cry, and everyone looks at you as if you are a fool. You stand in the queue crying. And when you finally reach the front, they come back with a death certificate and say the cause of death is unnatural. I told them that and said I would not accept this. The police arrived again, and there was a dispute. In the end, I got a death certificate that refers to a gunshot wound to the abdomen.
We have a farmers' organisation called Agri SA, which is the only agricultural organisation the government accepts as its official spokesperson. I mentioned this to them many years ago. Our organisation has never defended any farmer. I personally spoke with senior management, Dan Creek, but they did nothing. They simply concealed these death certificates. No one has ever come back to confront me and say: "You are wrong, you are right." Nothing. I have photos that prove it — I can show and prove it. We saw a notable increase in the number of farmers, I believe, between 2000 and 2007. Do not believe me, but suddenly the death certificates changed — after previously indicating a gunshot wound or whatever the cause was, they now indicate otherwise. So I believe Ramaphosa is committing the biggest fraud in the world, first and foremost regarding death certificates. And do not tell me that the ambassador here in the United States, Mr. Roelof Meyer, does not know this. Because he was part of the government and was reporting to the president, Mr. F.W. de Klerk, at that stage. He must have known all of this, and still knows it.
If you go through all of this, first and foremost, they will not investigate the murder. And if they do investigate it, the case file will disappear at the police station. It will simply disappear. You will have no say in it. If they catch someone — like this, Mario Consalvo, who killed my father-in-law, killed 23 people. He was sentenced to life imprisonment, 146 years. We went through that entire ordeal. So when you get to court, I only studied agriculture. I am not a lawyer, not a rights defender, not a politician. I am an ordinary person. I struggle to pay my bills like any other ordinary person. But my farm operations are going well. They are living and eating. I will not feed a white person like Julius Malema or Pitso Mosimane in South Africa. I would rather feed a black person, and not Malema. We are not all racists — black and white. I cannot be blamed for what happens in the Cape Flats. You are burning your own people. I am defending myself, my family, my people. I have been through three attacks. We survived the first two. No one was killed.
Tucker Carlson: Is that how you got the scar on your chin?
Leon Lotz: Yes, that is one of them.
Tucker Carlson: What happened?
Leon Lotz: I was slaughtering cattle, and they came close, saw me, and said I would report them. They had to kill me. They were slaughtering my cattle.
Tucker Carlson: They were slaughtering your cattle?
Leon Lotz: It was my grandfather's cattle, so they tried to slaughter me. I resisted. I have a scar on my leg and a scar on my side. That one was fine. As for the others, they came to my grandfather's farm and said they wanted to buy sheep. My grandfather immediately noticed there was a problem. My wife was with me, and we did not have children yet. My grandfather sent my wife to the house and told her to turn off the lights or open the door for the dogs, or something like that. At first she did not understand. When she understood, she went inside, opened the safe, and took out the weapons. I entered from the other side of the house, and my grandfather was standing there. As soon as we entered, a taxi full of people came out. They came out with AK-47s and started shooting at us. My grandfather came out of the kitchen door and we returned fire. We called the police and they came. They conducted no forensic investigation and nothing happened after that.
Tucker Carlson: Why did they start shooting at you with AK-47s?
Leon Lotz: I do not know. We had no sheep for sale.
Tucker Carlson: Did you know these people?
Leon Lotz: No. Had you seen them before?
Tucker Carlson: Had you seen them before?
Leon Lotz: The same people who killed my father-in-law. I had not seen them before. In court, when Mario Conza was arrested, it was said there were eight people outside, six people. So when you commit a farm murder, you have all these security measures against theft outside.
Tucker Carlson: Yes.
Leon Lotz: All the steel fences, all the barbed wire to prevent people from entering. But you are in the house — you are trapped in your house, you cannot get out.
Tucker Carlson: Yes.
Leon Lotz: But you do not do that. I mean, driving to a stranger's house and shooting with an AK-47 for no reason is strange.
Tucker Carlson: It is the same as what they did when they killed your father-in-law. That is what they do. They drive past in their cars and see this as an easy target, so they enter.
Leon Lotz: Did they steal a lot of things?
Tucker Carlson: They do not come to steal. They come to take weapons, kill, and steal cars. They do not steal anything. There is no robbery here.
Leon Lotz: They just want to kill white people.
The second and third attacks on Leon Lotz's farm
Leon Lotz: In the second attack, I returned from work and stopped in front of the farm gate. I found a black man standing in front of it holding a racehorse bridle. These bridles are expensive, plus aluminium shoes, horses, and many other things. He wanted to sell them to me. So I called a policeman and said: "There is a man standing in front of my gate, and it seems he wants to sell stolen goods." They told me: "You have to take him to the city of Kimberley. They will give me money. There is a pub called the Horseshoe Motel. I must stop there. They will wait for me there. I must keep this man in the car. Go in. They will give me money. There will be police in the adjacent parking lot." And so the plan worked perfectly. The police officers were standing outside. They did not look like police officers. All the black people got out of their cars. They gave me the money and I presented it to him. When he took the money, they arrested him. And that was the end of it. One less thief. But he escaped. Then he came back. And he set fire to my barn.
Tucker Carlson: He set fire to your barn?
Leon Lotz: Yes, my tractors burned. Some of my tractors and equipment — all our hay bales were there and burned. And as always, the insurance is insufficient when things like this happen. So I think I lost about 1.3 or 1.4 million rand up to that point. Out of my own pocket. I met my wife at home with weapons, and I took my weapons. It took me months to recover my weapons. In the end, they arrested him again and took my weapons with him. And he escaped again. And he is still free today. They never caught him. I was treated as a criminal because my weapons were lost. They wanted to cancel my weapons licences and all of that.
Tucker Carlson: It seems as if strangers carrying AK-47s think getting a weapon in South Africa is easy. Only we white people have to have a licence.
Leon Lotz: Yes, a firearms licence. As for AK-47s, we are not allowed to carry rifles or automatic weapons. You must have a special licence to have something like that.
Tucker Carlson: You do not own AK-47s?
Leon Lotz: No, we are not allowed to carry them. There are those who own them, but for specific reasons. So pistols, hunting rifles, and single-shot rifles are permitted, but otherwise no.
Tucker Carlson: So you have been the victim of three attacks on your farm. They tried to slaughter you. They attacked your wife. They killed your father-in-law in front of your eyes and in front of your children. But you are not allowed to carry an AK-47, while they are.
Leon Lotz: Yes, no, you are not allowed.
Tucker Carlson: That sounds like America.
Leon Lotz: So if you — listen, I do not want to shoot anyone. If I shoot one of these intruders, I guarantee you one million percent that I will be in prison first.
Tucker Carlson: In your own home?
Leon Lotz: In my own home. I guarantee you I will be imprisoned. So do not shoot them. Do not aim your weapon at them. Then you will be in big trouble. They are now trying to disarm us.
Tucker Carlson: How is this not ethnic cleansing? It seems to me that if you take a group of people on the basis of their race and tell them they cannot defend themselves, then tell others they can rape their wives and kill them — that looks like ethnic cleansing.
Leon Lotz: All of this is blamed on the poverty that I and my friend Mr. Jan van Riebeeck caused when he came in 1625. I do not know how I was communicating with him — perhaps via WhatsApp — I told him we would destroy South Africa. And would we steal everything? I have no answer to that. They are now trying to disarm us, one hundred percent, to confiscate all our firearms and prevent us from obtaining licences. They are doing their utmost to disarm us because they are worried we will defend ourselves. We cannot defend you — you cannot face an AK-47 with a 9mm pistol. No, that is impossible. And there is not a single farmer in South Africa who wants to kill and shoot people. Not one of us. Why would we do that? We need each other. We need to continue. All we want in South Africa is to be left alone and to continue. Why can we not be safe? Why are you killing us because of the poverty that you, as the ANC party, caused? How can I be blamed for poverty?
Tucker Carlson: You said you do not want to shoot anyone. You are a Christian. You do not want to harm others. And I believe you. How do you think the people who shot your father-in-law felt? Do you think they felt remorse?
Leon Lotz: No, I do not think they even have nightmares about it. How can you kill 23 people and then sit smiling in the courtroom? He looked directly at me and smiled and provoked me in a way that made me feel I was going to have a heart attack.
Tucker Carlson: Did he do that to you — the man who raped your wife and shot your father-in-law?
Leon Lotz: He looked at me and smiled, and others were sitting next to him. Only one of eight was caught. When you go to court, these people can choose a lawyer or defender, or this lawyer is provided for them. I have to sit with a prosecutor who is present on that day. We went to court years after the crime was committed — I do not know how many years, three or four. The prosecutor was a white man. The man representing the killer was also white. And the judge was a white man. So we do not have juries in South African courtrooms. The judge decides alone. Judges are appointed by the state, by the president. So they appoint their own judges. We have no say in that. So I have to go to court and accept the prosecutor who is there. This particular man arrived. He smelled of alcohol. He was sweating. He was late. And that whole thing I mentioned — I do not even know what to call it. He said he rushed into an empty courtroom and said to me: "My wife, please tell me what happened in the murder." For three or four minutes. Then we walked into court for three days. They took my wife inside. At some point, the man who was representing the white man representing this crime wanted to know what they did to her. And the rape crime had only been committed three or four years before that. In the meantime, she had an HIV test done without anyone knowing. They were waiting to see whether the result was positive or negative. And you go through all of this in court, only for this man to tell you that you are lying. You are condemned. I saw the body. I got the death certificate. We go to court. Do you know how many years of my life I wasted? Because of fear. I sit next to the kitchen table unable to speak. I cannot say anything. All that goes through my head and mind is what happened to me. Then this white lawyer will tell you that my wife is lying in court. And when everything is over and he is sentenced to 146 years, he is released after a year. They are now telling me he died. They cannot prove anything to me.
My wife became ill. We went to a professor in Cape Town. Everyone agreed that the illness was due to the extreme fear she had suffered. Her ten fingernails started falling off from front to back. She was in such pain that she could not clean herself when going to the bathroom. What a humiliation — that a woman has to use a hair dryer to dry her hair after washing it. That is what was left of it. All this pain from losing the nails due to these diseases. I could not take my wife. I could not transfer her to a hospital in my area — there is no hospital there. The nearest hospital where I could help her was in Cape Town. She stayed there for three and a half years, maybe more. On one occasion, we stayed there for six months and she received treatment. She underwent chemotherapy. There is an injection given to those with a deficiency of white blood cells, injected around the navel. I think it is called Granocyte. The price of one injection is 1,500 rand. Its purpose is to stimulate the body to produce white blood cells to strengthen the immune system. My health insurance did not cover the treatment costs. I had a hospital-specific health insurance plan, but the government does not cover it. I had to pay 60,000 rand per month. I do not know how long I will continue paying for that. Five injections per week, only on Saturdays and Sundays. This causes bone marrow swelling. She developed an allergy to morphine. No normal person can live all this time, with all these painkillers, and liver and kidney damage from chemotherapy and its tablets and everything that is drunk.
When I started giving her those injections, after four hours the bone marrow swells, and then she gets severe pain. I could not do anything to treat her. But these tablets that dissolve in water were the only thing that worked. I tried everything. But I am not a doctor, and yet I had to inject her myself. And I had to bring that wretched thing to know how much pain she would feel after four hours. Then on Saturday her condition would be better, and on Sunday she would be fine — walking, laughing, trying to cook, visiting the children. Monday morning at nine o'clock, I had to give her that injection again. I spent thousands of rand to give my wife comfort. Imagine if you had leukaemia or something similar and had to drive 800 kilometres to get home. When we had this country, we had hospitals. You could drive two kilometres in your city to reach the hospital. Someone would treat you.
Tucker Carlson: What happened to those hospitals?
Leon Lotz: The ANC government destroyed the hospitals. There are no more hospitals. There are no more major hospitals, and they now look like pigsties. You cannot go there. I invite anyone to go to those small towns between Johannesburg and Durban and see what happens. If you were sick, you would receive treatment. There are no more hospitals. Ramaphosa — all these hospitals have disappeared. So I had to drive her all the way home. All the expenses are on me. They are killing us. They are raping our wives. My daughter had to undergo psychological treatment. When a 15-year-old girl enters a hospital by herself where they try to treat her by herself, you must know she is in trouble. She called me and said: "Dad, I am here now. I can no longer live with myself." She did not commit suicide. She wrote a book of poems. When you read that book, you find yourself facing your daughter. You cannot help but cry. Then the whole world comes back and says: "You are liars. You are filthy racists. You are killing black people. That is why they are killing you."
Tucker Carlson: They actually say that. That is what the American media says.
Leon Lotz: They say that all over the world. If you go back to the desert testimonies, if you go back to the investigations, you will not find that. We cannot prove that we are being killed. There is a genocide happening. If there are 25,000 or 30,000 of us left, how many more people can they kill? Do you have any relatives in South Africa who work or live there, or who have emigrated to Australia, America, New Zealand, or England? I do not know if there is anyone who does not have relatives in another country.
Tucker Carlson: Will you stay?
Leon Lotz: I have to stay. My children do not want to leave. It is a beautiful country. We are trying to fix the situation. We need solutions. We need help. I do not know what the solution is.
Tucker Carlson: But it seems clear that the intention is to kill you or force you to leave.
Leon Lotz: Yes. I think we will continue until they start confiscating the farms and taking our property. Then your farming organisation, Agri SA, will negotiate with the ANC government on my behalf about my property that I worked for and paid for, without my permission.
Tucker Carlson: What do you mean by negotiating? What is this negotiation?
Leon Lotz: They set the rules that allow them to take over these farms. Which farms should be taken over? They started this a long time ago. What are the criteria that allow them to confiscate your farm? Then they come back and say: "No, it is not that bad." They will not just confiscate your farm like that. They can take anything they want. This is written into the laws. They can confiscate my car if they want, without compensation. We are following the same path as Zimbabwe. But we have to stand and try to save something. If I can save one daughter and one wife from rape, or testify to the existence of a body in court, and if we can choose our own lawyers and defenders ourselves so the government pays their fees, I will have made progress.
Tucker Carlson: It does not seem like you can convince them. I mean, anyone who allows this to happen is evil and not open to reason or negotiation.
Leon Lotz: I understand the military well. What I learned is that they are non-negotiable. It is impossible to negotiate with them. They fled to Russia. When apartheid was in place, they fled to Russia, to Lebanon, and to wherever else. Where did they flee? Perhaps Iran too. We have nowhere to flee. If I could appeal to the US government, whoever it is — I do not care. I have to defend my family. I cannot defend the Cape Flats or anyone else. We have reached a situation that forces me to defend my family. I almost reached this stage. I have to defend my children and the grandchildren I will have.
Tucker Carlson: It seems you will.
Leon Lotz: I have already made the decision. I have lost the love of my life whom I lived with for 37 years. My entire family was destroyed. This stole about ten years of my life. When I started breeding horses, I was extremely happy when I paid the first amount to buy a farm. I cannot explain that to you. When I had 10 goats and 5 sheep, that was the best thing that had ever happened to me in the world. I built it in a way that allows us to live. And now I have to give it up for free. They say I stole it. And because they have sovereignty in this government and can enact laws to punish Jan van Riebeeck, I keep coming back to the same problem, because the intelligence of this government is very limited and they only have this much intelligence. I cannot be held responsible for the poverty that exists. It is not my doing. I contribute, as do all my fellow farmers in South Africa, to fighting poverty. But we cannot care for the millions who enter the country as illegal immigrants. That is the government's job, not ours. And taking my farm and killing me will not solve the problem. Malema can shout whatever he wants. He does not have the mind or intelligence to grow maize tomorrow morning, or to raise cattle, or whatever he does. They will starve if we are not here. That is inevitable.
Julius Malema, the judiciary, and the path forward
Tucker Carlson: So all of this is because of a government and a judicial system that ignores what is happening. It seems the judges refuse to bring any of the perpetrators to justice. Who appoints the judges?
Leon Lotz: I am not a head of state or anything like that, but the head of state is the decision-maker, and Malema is a member of this council or whatever it is — Julius Malema — who decides who the judges will be.
Tucker Carlson: For those who do not follow South African politics, Julius Malema was the leader of what is called the Economic Freedom Fighters, correct?
Leon Lotz: Yes, he is the leader of the Economic Freedom Fighters. He is the one who sings "Kill the Boer, kill the farmer."
Tucker Carlson: Yes, he is like the Al Sharpton of South Africa — an openly racial agitator, anti-white, calling for violence against them, but portrayed as an opponent of the ANC, the ruling party. But how does he appoint judges?
Leon Lotz: I think Malema, in my personal opinion, is nothing but a front. Malema works with every fibre of his being for Ramaphosa.
Tucker Carlson: For the ANC.
Leon Lotz: Yes, from the bottom of my heart. I mean, everything points to that.
Tucker Carlson: Yes, it seems obvious even from here watching.
Leon Lotz: I was lucky enough to have been in a regular school and at university when it was still functioning. Although I studied agriculture, and I think I am stupid enough that I cannot see that.
There is a lawyer in Cape Town, Billy Wesley, who convicted him of hate speech. They went to court again a few days ago. He is supposed to be in prison. Nothing happened to him. He was convicted of firing a firearm in a public place where 80,000 or 90,000 people were sitting. He is not in prison. If you point a water pistol you bought from the local store where they sell bread that children play with — brand new plastic in neon green — if you point this toy pistol at someone, you will end up in prison. I know this because my son-in-law played with an air pistol with a black man. A pellet gun. And unfortunately he crossed the line and shot the man in the leg. He almost went to prison. He was fined 100,000 rand, punished with six months of community service, and convicted of pointing a firearm. A pellet gun that children play with. Malema can fire an automatic rifle in public places. He was convicted of this charge and was not punished. If Malema becomes president of South Africa, you will see bloodshed the likes of which you have never seen before. You will not see a bigger dictator than him.
The most important question is always: "Will you start fleeing to America? We can solve our problems ourselves." How can we solve our problems ourselves? How many times have we spoken to this government? How many times have you paid bribes to the court that did not help you? How can you solve your problems yourselves and be sovereign like this new president who came here at the weekend? When did he come here? Did he come to South Africa? This shows that we are not, and visa sanctions should not be imposed on them. How is this possible? That they justify to themselves the right to keep killing people. They stand in front of the entire world and sing "Kill the Boer, kill the farmer." They fire weapons. You are the one who employs the judges — you, Julius Malema, together with Ramaphosa. He is a board member. No one holds you accountable. There are no statistics. This makes no sense at all. How is this possible? The only way to stop this is for these politicians not to monopolise all the power. They cannot monopolise it. Our only way to survive is to have self-governance at some point. We have a place called Orania, where people own regular farms. On the other side of Hopetown in the Northern Cape, this system started and achieved remarkable success. Now the ANC and Malema are attacking them fiercely because they are racist. How can they be racist?
Tucker Carlson: The ones who destroyed every institution in your country — from the electricity grid to schools and hospitals, and even the system of governance itself, and the courts. Nothing works. The murder rate is out of control. The rape rate is the highest in the world. And now they are killing Afrikaans speakers and stealing their farms. So on what basis do they say you do not have the right to have your own community? I do not understand.
Leon Lotz: I cannot answer that question either.
Tucker Carlson: It seems somewhat familiar to me as an American, I have to say.
Leon Lotz: All I know is that my family's blood was spilled at some point for Jan van Riebeeck and the poverty in the country. I can assure you that if we were governing that place, poverty would not be what it is now.
Tucker Carlson: No.
Leon Lotz: But I cannot be blamed for that. But I do not want to become a provincial president. All I want is to be a farmer. As an agricultural engineer, I can make a contribution to my fellow farmers. Because I come back to this point — we already have the best farmers in the world. We are a Christian people. And your farmers have integrity. To continue farming in South Africa, if you do not have integrity, you will not be able to produce food because we do not get anything material. You have to do everything yourself. To harvest between 16 and 18 tonnes of maize, and 8 or 10 tonnes of wheat, and between 80 and 200 tonnes of potatoes. As for citrus, I do not know the facts. I am not an expert in trees and so on. But how do they not see that the South African farmer contributes to South Africa?
Tucker Carlson: Of course they do not see it, and that is why they hate you. I wish you well. Mr. Lotz, thank you very much for taking all this time and for telling what you have done.
Leon Lotz: It has been an honour, and we truly appreciate it. And on behalf of all of South Africa, and even on behalf of the residents of the Cape Flats — what is happening with the killing is unfortunate. I wish the situation were different. You cannot imagine how much we wish we could live in peace and safety together. There are enough farms for everyone to buy and farm. The government has enough money. And we white farmers have enough experience to establish farms and start farming. But not for free. We did not come here for free, and we will not leave for free.
Tucker Carlson: God bless you.
Leon Lotz: Thank you very much, sir.