Malema responsible for murders - AfriForum

2010-12-03 22:49

Bloemfontein - The murder of a 3-year-old girl and her parents on a Free State farm led to severe criticism on Friday, with the AfriForum grouping calling for the ANC and its youth league leader Julius Malema to take responsibility.

AfriForum spokesperson Kallie Kriel said: "As long as the ANC continues with its appeal case in the South Gauteng High Court to have the use of the slogan 'shoot the Boer' legalised, the ANC and Julius Malema have to accept responsibility for the murders."

He said people were literally being killed on farms and efforts by the ANC to justify "shoot the boer" were absurd.

Lindley farmer Attie Potgieter, his wife Wilna and 3-year-old daughter Willemien were found stabbed and shot at the farm Tweefontein near Lindley on Thursday.

The police have taken in six men for questioning.

Kriel said the murder of the Potgieters made people all the more bitter because the killings took place in the same week during which the ANC had been trying to convince the court that the "shoot the Boer" slogan in ANC songs was not meant literally.

Kriel said in the light of the continuing bloodshed on farms the ANC and Malema had to do the responsible thing by putting an end "once and for all" to the use of slogans that propagate violence. They had to condemn the murder of farmers and all other victims.

AfriForum also plans protests at courts where murder suspects appear.

Law enforcers

Freedom Front Plus spokesperson on police Pieter Groenewald said the cruel murder of the farming couple and their daughter was proof that the death penalty should be re-introduced.

"It is clear that ordinary jail sentences do not deter murderers because... the murderers left the arrogant message: We are coming back."

Groenewald said the worrying aspect was that farm murders were increasingly being perpetrated by murderers who acted in a group.

He said farmers comprised the group in which the most murders took place - on average 313 in every 100 000 individuals. This was followed by the murder of law enforcers where the figure was 153 in every 100 000.

"The chances that a victim in a farm attack could die are three times higher than in transit heists."

TAU SA said it was disgusted by the "barbaric murder" of the Potgieter family.

TAU SA president Ben Marais commended the police on questioning six people.

Marais also expressed his organisation's sympathy with the family of a North West province couple who was attacked. A woman was killed and her husband admitted to hospital in a critical condition following the attack.

The couple, in their sixties, was assaulted on their farm during another "senseless attack", said Marais.

"If this was going to be the tendency in the approach to the December holidays, we are facing a traumatic Christmas."

- SAPA