OWN CORRESPONDENT, Kakamas | Tuesday
THE survivor of a racial attack in the Northern Cape town of Kakamas has told how two white residents shouted racial abuse and swigged brandy and beer while they chained two coloured men to a tree and beat one of them to death, The Star newspaper reported.
Farm worker Dawid Klaaste spent 24 hours chained to the battered body of his friend Adam Smit, 38, before police discovered him on Sunday. He said the attack was carried out by a 30-year-old man and a 16-year-old schoolboy from a family that owns a farm in the northern Karoo town.
Klaaste and Smit had been recruited to sell vegetables for their alleged attackers on Saturday morning, but Klaaste told The Star said the deal went sour because a customer told them she could only pay for her potatoes the next day.
“When they found out the money was missing they came to fetch me at my house and tied me to the back of the bakkie with thick rope,” Klaaste said.
“Then they went to fetch Adam.” He said the pair stopped at the farmer’s house to fetch a bottle of brandy.
“They took us to a farm outside of the town, by a dam,” he said. “Then they tied us to a big tree, the same tree, with a chain around our necks and our hands tied behind our backs.”
The attackers apparently accused their victims of stealing the proceeds of the sale of potatoes.
“They told us that [former president Nelson] Mandela taught us to steal,” Klaaste said.
“They said we were all kaffirs and hotnots.” Then they allegedly kicked and beat their victims, hitting Smit over the head with a pick-axe handle, said The Star.
“After a while they went away but about half an hour later Adam died, right next to me. There was nothing I could do,” Klaaste said. “For 24 hours we were there together, I couldn’t get away.”
The men appeared in the Kakamas Magistrate’s Court on charges of murder and attempted murder on Monday. The two, Francois Bruwer, 30, and a Standard 8 pupil, are being kept in jail until November 27.