A rhetoric of terror and of the terrified

• Author: Nkoala, S.
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.47348/ACTA/2022/a6
• Published date: 05 September 2022
• Date: 05 September 2022
• Citation: 2022 Acta Juridica 119
• Pages: 119-139

119

https://doi.org/10.47348/ACTA/2022/a6

A rhetoric of terror and of the terried

SISANDA NKOALA*

This paper d raws on Philippe-Joseph Salazar’s work in Words are

Weapons: Inside ISIS’s Rhetoric of Terror (2017) on ISIS’s persuasive

self-presentation on social a nd traditional media, to consider the

rhetoric of the ter ried Farmers evident in the framing discourse

of selected South A frican television news repor ts on Farm attacks.

Scholars who st udy ISIS’s use of media have noted the ecacy

with which th is group has been able to harness the capabil ities of

media plat forms to spea k directly to audiences and con struct its

image. Li kewise, the communicative st rategies employed in the

framing discourse of South African media around the victimhood of

Farmers h ave been eective and have spread to aud iences worldwide.

Using Salazar’s exam ination of ISIS’s rhetor ic, expressed through its

use of words and i mages in the media , this paper discus ses similar ities

between ISIS’s self-presentation in aud io-visual media and the new s

media discourse that a rticul ates a sense of sel f-otherin g by Farmers

through these platforms.

I IN TRODUC TION

Farm attacks are dened as ‘acts aimed at the person of residents,

workers and visitors to farms and small holdings, whether with the

intent to murder, rape, rob or in ict bodily harm’.1 In the South

African public discourse, the signicance of this ter m is not vested

as much in the word ‘attack’ as it is in the idea of the ‘Far m’,

which is a ‘particular post-colonial space, al most mythica l in its

representation of the pol itical strug gle for freedom in South Af rican

security imaginaries’.2 In Steyn’s conceptualisation, Afrikaners in

South Africa view Farms as independent microrepublics that are

‘the last bastion of Afrikaner values’.3

* S isanda Nkoal a (PhD) is an academ ic in the Media Depa rtment at the Cape

Peninsu la University of Technology.

1 S outh African Pol ice Service Repo rt on Farm Attacks: Repo rt of the Committee

of Inquiry into Farm Attacks (2 013) 417.

2 J P retorius ‘“D ubula ibhunu” (shoot t he boer): A psycho-pol itical an alysis

of farm at tacks in South Afr ica’ (2014) 47 Psychology in Society 21 at 28.

3 A S Steyn ‘Sto ry of a South A frican f arm att ack’ (2019) 66 Afric a Today 55

at 69.

2022 Acta Juridica 119

© Juta and Company (Pty) Ltd

120 THE CR ITICAL RHETOR IC OF Ph-J SALAZAR

https://doi.org/10.47348/ACTA/2022/a6

The words ‘Farm’ and ‘Far mer’ are capitalised in this paper in

the same way that Salazar capitalises the notion of the Caliphate

in his book.4 The Caliphate is dened as the Islamic state.

Ordinarily, the word is not capitalised, but in Salazar’s work on

ISIS’s rhetoric, the term is written as a proper noun throughout

the book. This g rammatical choice prompts the reader to interpret

the word, not as a notion that generally refers to any Islamic state,

but as a term that refers to a specic and designated Islamic state,

which – while it does not technically exist geographically – is a

recognisa ble entity as expressed i n the language used by ISIS . Some

scholars, such as Hayes,5 have cr itiqued this approach, arguing that

Salazar does not go far enough to explain the choice, nor does he

discuss the meaning of the term and its complexities. In this paper,

I discuss why I have chosen to capitalise ‘Farmer’ and ‘Farm’, but

this is not to suggest that my reasons are the same as Salazar’s with

respect to his decision to capitalise Caliphate in his work.

As explained earlier, for Farmers, the notion of the Farm

refers to more than just the place where farming happens. It is the

genesis of the Afrikaner way of life and the site of the independent

microrepublic that Steyn calls Afrikanerdom.6 The notion of

attacks on Far mers refers to a specic kind of Far mer: the Boer.

The Boer, as a concept, has spec ic historical and pol itical mean ing

in South Af rica. The term refer s to South Afric ans of Dutch, Germ an

or Huguenot descent. The word also has meaning in geographical

terms because white settlers left the Cape Colony in the ni neteenth

century to move to the Orange Free State and Transvaal, which

became common ly known as Boer Republics. Steyn ar gues that the

Boers became i ncreasingly known a s Afrikaner s after their defeat in

the Anglo -Boer War (1899–1902). Ampie Coetzee posit s that ‘since

the institutionalisation of apartheid by the Afrikaner government,

boer became Boer and got denite ideological connotations with

police, military and power’.7 For this reason, Farmer is given as a

proper noun in this paper.

4 Ph -J Salaz ar Words are Weapons: Inside ISIS’s Rhetoric of Terror translated by

D Khaze ni (2 017).

5 H A Hayes ‘“This New World is not for the Fa int Heart ed”: Confront ing

the many d imensions of Ph ilippe- Joseph Sala zar’s Words Are Weapons: Inside

ISIS’s Rhetoric of Terror’ (2019) 52 Philosophy & Rhetor ic 301.

6 S teyn (n 3) 76.

7 A C oetzee, as trans lated and quote d in Pretoriu s (n 2) 23.

© Juta and Company (Pty) Ltd