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‘They spit in the face of black grace, and that dis-grace they will carry with them to their shallow graves.’
Jonathan Jansen has published an astounding article in News24 entitled White Crosses and Black Grace. In it, he accuses me and my colleagues at Lex Libertas of showing contempt for black people by commemorating the victims of farm murders.
He describes us as a political opportunists, associates our White Cross Project with white supremacy, and concludes with these words:
‘They spit in the face of black grace, and that dis-grace they will carry with them to their shallow graves.’
This is an astonishing thing to say about people campaigning against murder. One would expect better from an academic who has spent much of his career advocating reconciliation and understanding.
However, Jansen's personal insults are less interesting than the assumptions underlying his argument. These deserve closer examination, particularly because they reveal some troubling contradictions in his thinking.
Jansen's central argument is that black people in South Africa have shown extraordinary restraint towards white people despite centuries of historical injustice. He calls this ‘black grace’.
He cites Nelson Mandela's commitment to reconciliation and examples of black people forgiving white perpetrators of racial injustice. He also suggests that the absence of widespread retribution and radical redistribution following apartheid should be understood as expressions of this grace.
He then accuses Lex Libertas of showing contempt for black grace by campaigning against farm murders, particularly through our White Cross Project, during which we displayed 3,000 white crosses on the National Mall in Washington, D.C.
Yet he never explains how commemorating murder victims or campaigning to prevent further killings constitutes an affront to black grace.
The White Cross Project was not an accusation against black people. It was an effort to draw attention to farm murders, commemorate victims (including black victims) and encourage practical action against these crimes.
Jansen is free to disagree with our conclusions, methods or proposed solutions. But condemning the project as an act of racial ingratitude requires an argument he has not provided.
His article nevertheless carries a disturbing implication: that white people should consider themselves fortunate that black people have refrained from taking vengeance against them.
If commemorating murdered farmers constitutes an abuse of this so-called generosity, what exactly are white people supposed to conclude about the consequences of such perceived ingratitude?
There is an obvious moral distinction that Jansen appears to overlook.
Forgiving someone who has personally wronged you may indeed be an extraordinary act of grace. But refraining from harming someone who has done you no wrong cannot be described as an act of kindness by any stretch of the imagination. It is simply the right thing to do.
The non sequitur in Jansen's argument is his leap from historical injustices to the suggestion that white people today should remain silent about their grievances and be grateful that they have not been punished for the sins of previous generations.
This assumes that guilt and moral responsibility can be inherited collectively. In the process, he conveniently overlooks the injustices of the past three decades, presumably because they complicate his one-dimensional narrative of black victims and white perpetrators.
As a result, black people are portrayed as collectively deserving gratitude for withholding vengeance, while white people are expected to acknowledge a collective debt for the wrongs of previous generations.
But why should any reasonable person, white or otherwise, who has committed no injustice consider himself fortunate that another person has refrained from attacking him? And why should any reasonable person, black or otherwise, be praised for not seeking vengeance against someone who has never harmed him?
Surely we should reject the notion that members of one racial community inherit moral guilt merely because they belong to that community.
There is another irony here. Jansen has repeatedly expressed admiration for Martin Luther King Jr., whose famous dream was that his children would be judged by the content of their character rather than the colour of their skin.
In 2010, Jansen himself urged students at the University of the Free State to embrace precisely this principle. Four years later, he declared that ‘leaders judge people on the content of their character and nothing else’.
We can all agree with that. But surely the principle must also apply to moral responsibility. We cannot insist that persons be judged by their character rather than their skin colour, while simultaneously attributing historical guilt to them because of their racial identity.
Jansen appears to embrace King's principle when rejecting prejudice against black people, only to abandon it when embracing prejudice against white people.
The suggestion that white people must be careful not to exhaust the patience of the black majority also risks perpetuating deeply offensive stereotypes about black people: that they are inherently vengeful, prone to violence and merely waiting for an excuse to retaliate.
I find the implication that black people are collectively restraining an urge for violent retaliation particularly disturbing, not least because it bears so little resemblance to the attitudes of ordinary people in South Africa.
According to a March 2026 survey by the Institute of Race Relations (IRR), 89% of respondents agreed that people of different races need one another for progress and should enjoy equal opportunities.
A separate survey conducted by the Social Research Foundation (SRF) in July 2026 found that 72% of respondents believed South Africa would be worse off if all white people left the country, compared with only 17% who believed it would be better off.
The IRR also found that 70% of respondents, including 67% of black respondents, agreed that politicians use racism and colonialism to excuse their failures.
These findings do not mean that racial prejudice has disappeared. They do, however, suggest that ordinary people are considerably less consumed by racial antagonism than much of the political rhetoric would have us believe.
The hostility that dominates so much of our public discourse is too often amplified by politicians, journalists, academics and commentators who insist on interpreting society primarily through the lens of racial conflict.
There is a profound irony here: in attempting to portray those who commemorate murdered farmers as racists, Jansen invokes a conception of racial relations that risks reinforcing some of the most offensive stereotypes about black people.
And the irony does not end there.
Jansen has previously spoken out against precisely this kind of racial stereotyping.
In a lecture delivered in July 2008, he criticised the tendency of certain young white Afrikaners to interpret developments through the lens of ‘black incompetence, black greed, black barbarism and black retaliation’.
He was referring to a familiar phenomenon in South African politics: swart gevaar, the notion that black people collectively represent a threat to white people.
In March 2014, Jansen again cautioned against interpreting every incident of conflict through a racial lens. He argued that the majority of black and white people living in South Africa were decent and interested in peaceful coexistence.
On these points, we can once again agree.
It is wrong to assume that black people are collectively responsible for crimes committed by particular black individuals. It is equally wrong to regard black people as inherently threatening because of their race.
But this makes his latest article all the more peculiar. Judging from his latest piece, Jansen is either not interested in intellectual consistency, or he has changed his opinion.
In his earlier arguments, the fear of black retaliation was a racist prejudice to be challenged. Now, the absence of black retaliation is presented as an extraordinary moral favour for which white people ought to be grateful.
More importantly, Jansen appears to suggest that commemorating murdered farmers is somehow an abuse of this favour. The underlying message seems to be that white people must appreciate the restraint of the black majority, and should be careful not to offend it.
He is essentially warning white people to be afraid of the very same swart gevaar he previously argued doesn’t exist.
What any of this has to do with commemorating the victims of farm murders is still not clear.
Jansen cannot ridicule white people for fearing black retaliation while simultaneously invoking the withholding of retaliation by black people as a reason why they should remain grateful.
He certainly has the right to argue like this, just as we have the right to conclude that he is intellectually shallow.
This brings us back to the 3,000 white crosses in Washington, D.C.
Jansen calls the White Cross Project a provocation, yet he doesn’t even attempt to explain the so-called provocation.
Was it the fact that we commemorated murder victims? Was it that some of the victims were white? Was it that we displayed the crosses in Washington rather than Pretoria? Or was it simply that Jansen objects to the political views of those who organised the event?
He offers no convincing explanation.
The purpose of the White Cross Project was to draw attention to farm murders and encourage practical steps to prevent further attacks. Jansen could have challenged our evidence, questioned our recommendations or proposed alternative solutions.
Instead, he chose to interpret the commemoration of murder victims as an insult to black people.
This is an extraordinary conclusion. It implies that drawing attention to suffering in one community somehow diminishes the suffering of another. And I cannot help but conclude that this is truly what Jansen believes.
Reconciliation certainly cannot mean that commemorating murder victims is somehow an act of ingratitude.
Jansen is entitled to dislike our politics and to disagree with Lex Libertas. But if he wishes to condemn a campaign against farm murders as an affront to racial reconciliation, he owes his readers something more substantial than personal insults and insinuations about historical guilt.
The victims represented by those crosses deserve to be remembered. Their families deserve justice. And the public deserves a serious discussion about how further murders can be prevented.
For that reason, we will continue with our campaign.
None of this should be controversial.
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‘It is not enough to declare farm attacks a priority crime. A declaration to that effect would be nothing more than an administrative formality. What matters is whether practical measures are taken to prevent these attacks and bring perpetrators to justice,’ Roets said.
We therefore call on you to publicly and unequivocally condemn the attack on Mr Marx, and to express the government's commitment to combating farm attacks through practical and measurable interventions.
‘Most concerning, despite the severity of the crisis, this is the only crime phenomenon in South Africa that is both openly encouraged and actively denied by some of the most influential politicians in the country.’