White farmers in South Africa still own 75% of the country. And more than 1,500 of them have been murdered in the past decade. Blood and Land explores the political and racial battles many South African residents face over their homeland.  The special follows the stories of Louis Meintjies, Captain van Zyl and Payete Ndlovana over a bloody fortnight.

Louis Meintjies runs the operational center of his local farmers' self-defense unit. He, like many others, is in constant fear of his life, but is determined not to be forced from his land. But the battle is daunting, and law enforcement is scarce. Many farmers have turned to their local Commando for help, a paramilitary unit that dates back to the Boer war.

Captain Manie van Zyl, is head of the Serious Violent Crimes Unit, an under-resourced corps of eight men charged with investigating farm attacks, in a part of South Africa where the struggle over land has already begun to resemble a bloody war. 

Land claimant Payete Ndlovana can only visit graves of his ancestors through an electrified corridor. Payete Ndlovana's land was taken from his family under apartheid in 1973. Payete was thrown in jail and his land was sold to a white farmer. When the ANC government came to power over a decade ago, Payete lodged a claim to get his land back, but since then, the land commission has done nothing for him.

Against this background of increased land hunger and frustration with the pace of land reform, some see the killings as a straightforward Zimbabwe-style bid to intimidate whites off their farms.

But black farmers are coming under attack now too, so what does this mean? Are these farm attacks really a campaign to drive whites off the land, or are they a symptom of the country's persistent crime wave?

To learn more about this program, visit the BBC's program page.

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UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs 
Southern African Regional Poverty Network
International Food Policy Research Institute
Land Research Action Network