By Enyichukwu Enemanna
Outrage has trailed the killing of two black women in South Africa, Maria Makgato, 45, and Lucia Ndlovu, 34 by a white farmer identified as Zachariah Johannes Olivier, 60, who also allegedly fed his pigs with their bodies.
The victims were allegedly looking for food on the farm near Polokwane in South Africa’s northern Limpopo province in August when they were shot.
It is not clear why Olivier and his two employees who have since been arrested fed the victims’ bodies to pigs. It may however not be unconnected with efforts to conceal evidence.
The incident has further exacerbated racial tension between black and white people in South Africa, BBC quoted Ms Makgato’s brother Walter Mathole as saying.
Reports say such incidents are commonly recorded in the country’s rural communities despite the end of the racist system of apartheid since 1994.
It is now to be seen if the farm owner, Olivier and his employees Adrian de Wet, 19, and William Musora, 50, will get bail ahead of their murder trial.
They are expected to enter their plea upon arraignment at a later date.
Earlier, demonstrators had staged a protest outside the court building in Polokwane, demanding that the accused persons be denied bail.
The suspects will also face charges of attempted murder for shooting at Ms Ndlovu’s husband, Mabutho Ncube who was with the women at the farm, in addition to the illegal possession of firearm.
Ncube survived the shooting which happened in the evening of Saturday 17 August when he crawled away and managed to call a doctor for help.
He said he reported the incident to police and officers found the decomposing bodies of his wife and Ms Makgato in the pigsty several days later.
The family of Ms Makgato a single mother say they are devastated by her killing, leaving her four sons, aged between 22 and five years old without a mother.
The South African Human Rights Commission has condemned the killings and called for anti-racism dialogues between affected communities.
Groups representing farmers, who are often white, claim that farming communities have come under attack in a country with a high rate of crime.
Gun crimes have escalated in the country, with hundreds of persons killed in recent times.
Last week, Heritage Times HT reported that no fewer than 17 persons were killed in a mass shooting in a remote town in South Africa, in an attack where two homesteads in the town of Lusikisiki in the Eastern Cape were targeted.
12 women and one man were killed in one location, and three women and one man at a second scene.
