FRIDAY, 3.30PM
A POLICEMAN has been arrested for selling stolen goods believed to belong to murdered Newcastle farmers Nicholas and Magda Marais. The policeman appears to have arrested a suspect in connection with the murders, then freed him and tried to sell the stolen goods.
Meanwhile in Pretoria, Freedom Front leader Constandt Viljoen organised a march on President Nelson Mandela’s residence by angry white farmers demanding tougher crime prevention.
And in Johannesburg, police and soldiers demonstrated in the city centre against crime, and to “show solidarity with the public”
THURSDAY, 3.30PM
TEN farmers have been murdered this month alone, and another eight have been injured in attacks. In the latest attack, Newcastle farmers Nicholas and Magda Marais were strangled, then shot dead.
On Thursday the SA Agricultural Union warned that organised agriculture should not be blamed if it takes extraordinary steps to protect its members against criminal attacks on farms.
SAAU president Chris du Toit said the wave of farm attacks this month lent further weight to the union’s earlier call for a judicial inquiry. “We are abhorred [sic] by the barbaric way in which a farmer and his wife were murdered in KwaZulu-Natal in the latest killing,” Du Toit said. “The SAAU and its affiliates should not be blamed if they take extraordinary measures to protect its members and other farmers against such attacks.”
Meanwhile, the far-right Boere Weerstandbeweging announced that its military wing will go to war in defence of white farmers. BWB spokesman Kobus Pieters said: “In the light of the government’s unwillingness to protect the whites from racist-political violence, the BWB declares that they will from this moment on do the work themselves.”
He said that for every attack on any white, the BWB’s military wing, the Boere Republikeinse Leer (Boer Republican Army) will retaliate, using everything at its disposal. “From now on only one rule applies: an eye for an eye. Unfortunately, innocent people could be killed in the battle,” Pieters said.