A White South African farm owner and two employees are facing trial over the alleged murder of two Black women who prosecutors say were shot dead for trespassing last August and their bodies fed to pigs – stoking fury in a nation already reeling from racial tensions.
The women were said to have been killed by Zachariah Olivier, 60, and his workers, Adrian De Wet, 19, and 45-year-old foreign national William Musoro.
The men appeared at the Limpopo Polokwane High Court on Monday, in the northern Limpopo province, a regional spokesperson for the National Prosecuting Authority of South Africa (NPA) told CNN.
The trio “are facing two counts of murder, attempted murder, three counts of defeating the ends of justice, and possession of firearms and ammunition,” the NPA said in an earlier statement.
Musoro, described by police as “an illegal immigrant,” was additionally charged with “contravening sections of the illegal immigration act,” a police statement said.
They were not asked to enter a plea before the hearing was shifted to Thursday, NPA spokesperson in Limpopo, Mashudu Malabi-Dzhangi, said.
The men were arrested after police investigations led to the discovery of the decomposed bodies of the women “in a pigsty on a farm in Sebayeng, outside Mankweng,” on August 20, 2024, the police statement said at the time.
“The investigation began when a 45-year-old South African woman went missing after visiting the farm on 17 August (2024), accompanied by a 35-year-old foreign national woman,” police said. “Both women sustained gunshot wounds, and a 47-year-old foreign national man, who was with them” escaped but “was also shot and hospitalized.”
The survivor told reporters that one of the murdered women was his wife. The other woman was their neighbor. They had entered the farm to collect expired and abandoned dairy products, he said.
Many South Africans outraged by the killings have called for justice for the victims.
Similar murders have been recorded in South Africa in recent years. In Mpumalanga, in the country’s east, four men, including a 24-year-old farm manager, are facing charges of murder and kidnapping for allegedly killing and burning the bodies of three people accused of stealing sheep last August, the NPA said.
In 2019, a South African High Court handed down lengthy prison sentences to two White farmers for throwing a 16-year-old teenager out of a moving truck in Coligny, in the North West Province, for allegedly stealing sunflowers. The men were, however, acquitted two years later by a higher court, which overturned their sentencing, citing a lack of evidence.
Violent crime is rife in the southern African nation of just over 60 million people, where nearly 20,000 murders were recorded between April and December last year, according to police data.
Farm murders, involving both White and Black South Africans, make up a small part, about 0.2% of those killings, even though White nationalist groups make widely disputed claims of a genocide against White farmers.
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