Man shot dead in latest Pretoria farm attack on Thursday morning

A man, believed to be in his 50s, was fatally shot in an attack at a smallholding in Rooiwal, Pretoria in the early hours of Thursday morning, 6 August.

“At around 01:30 I heard the dogs barking and went out to inspect,” Marius Pretorius, a neighbour across the street, said.

“I then heard my neighbour shouting, ‘help, help, he is dead, my son is dead’,” Pretorius said.

Pretorius rushed to the elderly woman’s aid and brought her to his house to help calm her down.

“I phoned the Pretoria North police who arrived on the scene about six minutes later.”

According to Pretorius, the woman told him that three armed men entered their house and dragged her out of her room into the hallway before hitting and kicking her.

“She just lay on the floor until the suspects left.”

Pretorius further said it would appear that his neighbour wounded one of their attackers.

“There is a blood trail from the bedroom through the hallway leading outside into the field.”

He said members of the community have gathered at the house to help look for the suspects.

Meanwhile, the Democratic Alliance (DA) MP Dianne Kohler has argued that farmers, farmworkers, their families and visitors were under threat due to attacks.

“The annual crime statistics released on Friday show that another 49 farmers were slaughtered last year – four every month – while reliable reports tell us that another 26 farmers and farmworkers have been murdered in the first half of this year during some 141 attacks,” she said.

Kohler added that 612 of them had allegedly been murdered in the last 10 years.

“There have been 2,818 attacks on farms – leaving many maimed, crippled or blinded.”

She further lambasted the police service saying that while plan after plan had been devised, farmers, farmworkers, their wives, children and parents were allegedly twice as likely to be murdered than a police officer and four times more likely to be murdered than the average South African citizen.

“It seems to be only in the most isolated of our rural areas where attackers have the time to hone their craft, to boil their oil and heat the iron and to sharpen their machetes,” Kohler said.

This article first appeared on Rekord North and was republished with permission.

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