UPDATE: Crucial time lost due to slow response by SAPS

ACCORDING to a complaint submitted by AfriForum to the National and KwaZulu Natal Police Commissioners, local police and the Newcastle Canine Unit responded at an unacceptably slow pace to the murder of elderly farming couple, Nico and Marcia Lens, who were shot dead on their farm, Elim, near Lüneberg on September 3.

“The nearest police station is 30km from the farm,” says Eugene van Aswegen, AfriForum Spokesperson for Community Safety in KwaZulu-Natal, ” but it took the SAPS about an hour and a half to get to the scene.”

He further added, “The Canine Unit of the Newcastle Police Station only arrived about three hours after the crime. The Canine Unit is one of the most valuable response units, they should have been on the scene much quicker.”

By the time of their arrival, it was already too dark for an effective search, according to Chris Fourie, Provincial Coordinator for AfriForum in KwaZulu-Natal . “Farmers from the community searched along with the SAPS for the suspects.”

AfriForum has requested an urgent meeting with the Minister of Police, Nkosinathi Nhleko, regarding the recent spate of farm attacks and murders that has hit the country in the past few months.

The senseless murder of Nico and Marcia Lens brings the total number of farm murders to twenty, since Nhleko’s inauguration on May 25 of this year.