Pretoria | Thursday
A SOUTH African farmer and a member of a local vigilante group were jailed for nine and seven years respectively on Wednesday for beating a suspected tomato thief to death and seriously injuring another.
The Pretoria High Court sentenced Ockert Werner (35) and Marius van Antwerp (31) for beating two men with a sjambok, a whip made from hard rubber and commonly used by South Africa’s apartheid regime police to break up crowds.
Both were convicted on charges of attempted murder, assault with the intent to do grievous bodily harm and kidnapping.
One of the two victims, an illegal Mozambican immigrant identified only as “David,” died after the beating, which happened on Werner’s farm about 60 kilometres northwest of Pretoria, two years ago.
A second worker, Adam Masango, was seriously injured in the attack.
The court heard how both men were blindfolded and locked in a storeroom on the farm by Werner, who then called in the help of a local vigilante group to “punish” the men he suspected of stealing tomatoes.
Van Antwerp hit the helpless, naked men for over an hour with a sjambok before locking them up again. Both received over 100 lashes.
The men were locked up in the room for several hours after the attack, and Werner only offered them pain-killers and disinfectant for their wounds through one of his employees hours later.
Passing sentence, Judge Johan van der Westhuizen said David could have lived if Werner had ascertained how seriously injured the men were and had sought medical help for them at a much earlier stage.
The judge described the attack on the two men as “cruel, brutal, cold blooded and cowardly.”
Werner’s bail was extended, pending the outcome of an appeal.
The case comes after four white policemen were sentenced last week for setting their dogs on three Mozambican immigrants while videotaping the incident.
In that case, the men received sentences of between four to five years. – AFP