Epidemic of South African Farm Murders Continues as Gunmen Shoot Elderly Victim Dead

Another South African farmer has been reported killed after three gunmen attacked his homestead — part of a sustained campaign of violence across the country.

The alleged attack took place in Potchefstroom in the North West province, according to Times Live. The elderly victim was pronounced dead at the scene by paramedics from the private ambulance company ER24.

OFM, a radio station based in Central South Africa, put the farmer’s age at 69, and quoted police spokeswoman Pelonomi Makau as saying the killers were driven off by his son following a high-stakes altercation:

“They saw three suspects hiding at a fence who shot at the farm owner,” she said. “He died at the scene and the son managed to fight back the suspects. He managed to confiscate a firearm, knife and cell phone from the suspects. They then fled the scene.”

The killing is just the latest in a series of murders which the government has been accused of encouraging, and which have made farming in South Africa the most deadly occupation in the world.

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While they are little-reported even within South Africa itself — the government directed police to stop releasing information about victims’ ethnicity in 2007 — one recent murder which made headlines was that of 64-year-old former pharmaceutical executive Sue Howarth, who was a British national.

Mrs Howarth and her husband, 66-year-old Robert Lynn, were confronted by a group of masked men at their isolated farm in the small town of Dullstroom, where they had lived for twenty years, in February this year.

The men tied up the elderly couple and tortured them with a blowtorch for several hours, with Mrs Howarth suffering “horrific” burns to her breasts.

Her attackers attempted to kill her by stuffing a plastic bag down her throat, before driving her and Mr Lynn to a roadside ditch where they shot her twice in the head and her husband once in the neck.

Miraculously, Mr Lynn survived, and was eventually able to flag down a passing car for assistance. Mrs Howarth was also still alive, somehow managing to breathe despite the bag in her throat, but died in hospital two days later.

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