Another farm attack in the Kirkwood area has again highlighted the need for urgent intervention by the South African Police Service (SAPS) in this provincial farm attack hotspot.
The Democratic Alliance (DA) has been informed that a farm attack took place in Kirkwood this morning at 03:12 after six suspects descended on a local family.
Over the past several months the DA has been raising its concerns regarding the high rate of farm attacks in the Addo and Kirkwood area, but these concerns seem to be falling on deaf ears.
This recent attack is another warning flag of the increasing violent crime in rural communities in the Eastern Cape. It highlights the urgent need for SAPS to ramp up their efforts to improve rural safety and safeguard vulnerable communities.
We commend SAPS on the arrests that have already been made, but call on them to pull out all the stops to apprehend some of the suspects that are still at large.
The DA resolved at its Federal Congress to ensure that farm attacks and farm murders are declared a hate crime and a priority crime category. The resolution further seeks to ensure harsher sentences if prosecutors prove that the motive for the crime was hatred or contempt based on the victim’s identity as a farmer or farm worker.
The DA believes that some additional steps can be taken to improve rural security:
- The introduction of specialised units dedicated to protecting rural communities;
- Increase the research and statistical information on these crimes and make it available on an electronic dashboard;
- Increase the investigative capacity of SAPS. This means the utilisation of every available technology, such as drones, when tracking perpetrators;
- There should also be tax relief measures for those in rural areas, such as farmers, who have to pay for private security companies, as well as subsidies for farm patrollers, farm watchers, and companies providing security in rural communities;
- We also need to increase the crime intelligence capacity for rural areas, and
- Border security needs to be improved.
On 3 November 2020 DA Eastern Cape Shadow MEC for Safety and Security, Bobby Stevenson, MPL, reiterated his call for a rural safety summit for the Eastern Cape. At this proposed summit key stakeholders can meet and come up with long-term, workable solutions to address the issue of escalating violent crime in rural areas, including farm attacks.
I will now write to him to request that he once more takes the matter of the increase in farm attacks up in the provincial legislature.
We wish the farmer who was injured during the attack a speedy recovery and would like thank the community for their assistance.