Angella Johnson
SEVENTY-year-old Hendrik Anderson and his rifle are inseparable. That’s been so ever since, that is, the first attempted robbery at his farm in Mpumalanga six years ago. There have been three attacks since then, the latest on Monday after he left his weapon by the farmhouse door.
Anderson was shot, beaten to the ground and his niece was stabbed in the leg by two armed men who made off with an R5 assault rifle, a .22 rifle and a bakkie. ”They caught me cold,” said the sprightly septugenarian.
He had just stepped out of the house of his farm in the Val district, 30km from Standerton, to connect the windmill pumping water into a tank when he spotted the men standing some distance away in a field. He watched them for a while and they seemed to disappear in the opposite direction. ”I was only going 50m away and didn’t think it necessary to take the gun,” he says. ”In any case I just assumed they had gone and got back to what I was doing.”
It did not take him long to regret this. On turning round he found the men standing directly before him. They asked for work and he told them to go away because he had none to offer. As Anderson sidled towards the house, the duo produced a gun, fired a shot which grazed his scalp, then wrestled him to the ground. ”They really roughed me up before taking me into the house, demanding money and weapons.”
Inside the house Anderson’s niece, Catarina Engelbrecht (44), heard the commotion and hid under her bed after bolting the door. ”They forced their way in and searched under the bed, then told me to get out,” she said. As she came out feet first, one of the attackers plunged a knife into her thigh. ”I was so frightened I didn’t realise what they had done at first, but then the pain really hit me,” she said, explaining that she was then asaulted by the men.
Engelbrecht, who is from Johannesburg, had been staying at the farm for several months before the attack. ”I thought I was away from the kind of crimes associated with the city and yet look what’s happened,” she cried.
Engelbrecht and her uncle were then locked in a cupboard while the gunmen made their getaway, but Anderson kicked down the door and grabbing a .303 rifle under his bed, he fired at the departing bakkie.
Anderson retired to the isolated farm, Klipfontein, after his father’s death 20 years ago. He keeps a few sheep and cows without any help. ”Now it looks like I might have to leave because my children are worried the next time I could be attacked and killed. But if you read the newspapers it seems this kind of thing is happening everywhere. There’s nowhere to run.”