Angella Johnson
It was a sunny spring day in September when Andr Swart and his wife Lenie drove through the manicured grounds of their sprawling commercial farm. They had been to church, a high point of the weekly social calendar for their tight-knit Afrikaner farming community.
As their car pulled into the garage four men rushed out from a dark corner where they had been lying in wait and a shot rang out. Sitting in the passenger seat Lenie Swart turned to stare up the barrel of a shotgun pointing through the shattered driver’s window.
Her husband’s head was slumped on his chest, blood seeping from his neck. “I realised immediately that he was dead, but I was very calm,” she says. “I reached over and switched off the engine.” Another armed attacker opened her door and dragged her out.
The men handcuffed her, then demanded weapons and money. “I took them into the house to the safe in our bedroom. There wasn’t very much money in it, just a few rands which they took, along with two guns. They didn’t touch my jewellery or the other guns my husband kept there.”
When they asked where the rest of the money was, she said there was no more. “They smacked me across the face and shouted that they were going to shoot me. I told them they could because there was no other money.”
The killers (one who was wearing a mask and did not speak) were agitated and jumpy – they tied her legs, gagged her and left.
“I managed to free myself from the handcuffs and was walking down the passage when I saw one of them. He demanded to know if I had called the police, then tied me up again.”
This time she waited until the men had driven away in the family car – they dumped her husband’s body on the garage floor – before freeing herself again and calling neighbours on the two-way radio. They put up road blocks in the area, but did not catch the gang. Neither have the police.
Andr Swart was one of four farmers murdered in a spate of violent attacks on white farmers in the Koppies area of the Free State over the past three months. More have perished elsewhere in the country, causing widespread outrage and threats from farmers’ organisations that they will set up local vigilante groups.
“It is the government’s responsibility to see that every citizen can work without fear of attack,” complains Kobus Visser, of the South African Agricultural Union. He says statistics show that farmers are twice as likely to be attacked and four times more likely to be murdered as the rest of the population. “And the numbers are rising. Our members are desperate and things could get out of hand because they don’t know why this is happening.”
Lenie Swart has no doubts about why her husband was killed. “It was political,” she says coldly. “They didn’t come for money. They came to shoot him. If they wanted money there were lots of ways to do that, because the house was empty and they had plenty of time before we got back.”
Her face a mask of emotional containment, she insists the killers are intent on taking out farmers who are prominent in their community. “My husband was a leader in their area. He was a member of the wheat board and the Free State Agricultural Union. He was also very outspoken on issues about government involvement in farming.”
Andr Swart had also been a tough man, who ruled with a paternalistic will. “He did things his way and everyone knew that, but we never treated our people badly,” she added.
Since the shooting Lenie Swart has not slept in the elegant house she lived in for 25 years, opting instead to spend her nights with family members on neighbouring farms. “We have become paranoid about security, though there’s not much you can do to protect land this big.”
Her son, Louwrens Swart (27), who lives on a neighbouring farm, believes there is. “We’ve become more alert to situations that might arise and we are now more prepared,” he states ominously, but refuses to elaborate – except to say that voluntary armed civilian groups now patrol the area.
He admits that there may be times when farmers will take the law into their hands and mete out their own kind of justice to criminals “because we don’t believe in the legal system as it does not pass the right punishment for murderers. They should bring back the death penalty.”
The family is probably one of the biggest landowners in the area, farming maize, wheat and cattle, and with a large chicken- packaging operation.
“We used to have a good agricultural environment, but now there are too many labour laws. It’s causing friction, especially when the unions encourage workers to act against us,” Louwrens Swart argues.