A pair of hopeless white South African farmers beg their commanders to help them flee the country they suffer and settle in the United States.
Onion and potato farmers Zegna and Lutwich Pretorius said they have been victims of violent attacks since July. And because the local police do nothing, they drove their land by their neighbors just for their skin color.
“To be totally honest with you, when Trump took office, I shed tears of joy,” Zenia Pretorius 46 posted over the phone from the city of Polokwane.
Zegna, her husband Ludwich, and three young children, ages 13, 12 and 9, are keen to see President Trump's executive order grant refugee status to South Africans like her, and are sacrificed by laws targeting them to be white.
The order was caused by a new law in the country that allows expropriation without compensation, but there is no date in which it will take effect.
The law reflects a similar “land reform” law by Zimbabwe in the 1980s, where the state took land from white farmers that had quickly led to the economic collapse of the country.
“We're ready to go, our kids are ready to go… my daughter knows the sport she wants to do, she's ready to go tomorrow,” Zegna said.
Family Saga was first reported By the Sunday Times of South Africa.
The attack on white landowners was an ongoing problem in South Africa. In 2023 there were 49 murders and 296 attacks on white farmers. Ngo Afriforum in South Africa.
The Pretorius family – multi-generational South Africans – first purchased the farm in 2002. The land is adjacent to a nearby community of Taibos, an informal government settlement about 175 miles north of Johannesburg.
Over the years, families have become accustomed to trespassing, poaching and petty theft. Such crimes are rarely punished. They raised cows until the theft was forced to abandon it five years ago.
Last year, the nearby Taaibos community began to sharply escalate the invasion of 7,400 acres of property.
“S-T really hit the fans in July 2024,” Zegna recalls. “We were in the middle of a farm sale. We were in the middle of a contract. We were in the final stages of a week since we signed the transfer papers.
“On July 6th, they reduced the farm and border fences in the Taibos region. [3.8 mile] The boundary fence is cut into completely small bits. So they were able to send cattle to our side that should not be grazing,” recalls Zegna.
“We want to reclaim our land,” read a sign creepyly posted on the wreckage.
Police initially attacked the problematic cows and responded by angering locals.
“All of the sudden messages have begun to pass [Ludwich] On his phone, all these locals will gather at the farm and say they want to get the cows back and say they want to have the farm,” Zegna said.
When the Pretorius family tried to send workers to rebuild the fence, locals beat them with sticks, taking three of them hostage for several hours.
“It got loud, rough, verbally violent, they started threatening to burn my farm. I was with the kids and saw the crowd gathering,” Zegna recalls.
“They were screaming for all sorts of slanderous and racist remarks, singing “kill the farmers” and “kill them.”
“So I realized that this is a bigger problem than wanting to graze on the farm, not just cattle.”
A nervous buyer bowed as the property overruns with an uninvited guest.
Without sale, the property would not be able to service the outstanding debts on the property in advance. This is currently being auctioned. Zegna said she expects it will eventually be incorporated into the adjacent Taibos region.
The finances were tough and Lutwich worked for another farmer, but Zegna started a business selling freeze-dried candies.
“I was in the grocery store. It was me and my daughter, and maybe 60 or 70 people around us. “My daughter refuses to go to the store with me.”
“Staying here is not an option,” Zegna said.
