Sometimes I struggle with the understanding of terms and views in the new South Africa. Listen to this story and tell me what you think.
Some years ago there was an assault on a man working on a farm, he was not a farmer, but a 63 year old white male. This job was something to keep him busy with, basically to help him survive having a free place to stay. In return for doing some sort of supervision on this farm, which was more a storage space than a farm, he was paid a few bucks. I do not think that it was done so much for the money, as he was getting a not too bad pension fund, so this was more a thing of staying busy.
Getting back to the assault, he was attacked after the door to the house was forced open, injured real bad and left lying in his own blood. Was found later and taken to the local state hospital. There he was released after a couple of days into the custody of one of his children, who took him to their home some 200km away.
But things were not good, the same day they arrived home with him, he was taken to another doctor again. This doctor didn’t really do much either, and to make a long story short, this man was admitted to yet another state hospital about 5 days later, where he died.
Now after his attack, a case of assault was opened, which in my mind should have been attempted murder and then changed to murder after he died. The hospital said that he died due to injuries sustained during the attack.
This is where my understanding of terms gets lost in our country. Was this a farm murder? The sad part is that the family of this man still do not have the official cause of death, as it became a twist and turn situation between the police and the medical examiner as to who should get the reports. The best part however is that the police lost the docket, they cannot change it to murder because not even the original assault file can be found.
If it was a famous person, this would have made headlines all over, but I am sure that many attacks on farms just silently gets lost.
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