A White South African farmer has come under fire for allegedly killing two Black women who trespassed onto his farm and dumped their bodies in a pigsty.
The New York Times reported Maria Makgatho, 44, and Locadia Ndlovu, 35, were shot and killed after they entered a farm in Limpopo province in mid-August.
In South Africa, rural residents frequently break into White-owned farms to scavenge for discarded food. The two women entered the farm after a dairy truck had passed, hoping to find leftover food, but they never returned.
Farm owner Zachariah Johannes Olivier, 60, and his employee, Andrian Rudolph De Wet, 19, shot them. Local police reported that the two discarded the bodies in the pigsty, and the pigs even ate some of the remains.
Makato’s husband was at the crime scene but managed to escape despite getting shot at.
The South African community is outraged, with many residents protesting outside the courthouse and politicians issuing anger-filled statements.
The NYT pointed out that this incident reignited debates surrounding the persistent issues of race and gender-based violence in South Africa, as well as frequent bloody conflicts between white commercial farmers and their Black neighbors.
Many Black South Africans had their land taken from them by force during the apartheid era, which ended in 1994. As a result, most of the major commercial farms in South Africa are still owned by White people.
There are a lot of Black residents who still live in poverty and rummage through farm waste to find food. Despite the severe poverty crisis in rural areas, there are counterarguments that many White farmers feel threatened by ongoing invasions of their property.
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