White farm owner shoots Black women, feeds bodies to pigs in S Africa

Poor residents of a rural South African community in the northeast of Johannesburg would often sneak into a nearby pig farm in search of discarded food.

But a routine scavenger hunt by two Black women led to their brutal killings, allegedly by the white owner of the farm and two of his accomplices.

Bodies of the slain women were later found to be fed to farm pigs.

Maria Makgatho, 44, and Locadia Ndlovu, 35, never made it out of the farm alive once they entered the premises to collect yoghurt from a pile of discarded dairy goods.

The expired or soon-to-be-expired dairy products, dumped there by a food company’s truck, were meant for pigs.

Partly eaten bodies

The farm owner and two of his workers are facing charges for fatally shooting the two women and then dumping their bodies in a pigsty where the police found the “decomposed and partly eaten” bodies.

The accused farmer and his two workers remain in police custody as a judge on October 2 postponed a bail hearing until November 6.

The alleged killers had dumped the bodies in the pig pen to dispose of the evidence.

South Africa witnessed the extreme form of racial discrimination and violence under apartheid until 1994.

Public anger

The latest incident has sparked public anger in South Africa and beyond, bringing issues of racial tensions, gender violence and the continuing disputes over land between predominantly white commercial farmers and their Black neighbours into the limelight.

Prosecutors told the court that the farm owner and the farm supervisor—both white men—had planned to shoot any trespassers. Another accused, a 45-year-old Black farm worker, is also in custody for allegedly helping the two white men dump the bodies in the pigsty.

The husband of one of the slain victims who was with the women when they went to the farm survived the ordeal. He was shot once but managed to crawl away from the farm to call a doctor for help.

The country’s transition to democracy and the election of Nelson Mandela as its first Black president marked a significant step toward reconciliation, but race relations between white and black communities in South Africa are still strained.

Economic disparities

Despite the dismantling of apartheid laws, economic disparities between white and Black South Africans remain stark. White South Africans, who make up a small portion of the population, continue to hold much of the country’s wealth and land.

In contrast, black South Africans often face high levels of poverty, unemployment and limited access to quality education and health care. Nearly two in every three Black South Africans live in poverty.

The corresponding rate of poverty-stricken people among white South Africans is only one percent.

A recent report noted that the killing of two Black women by a white farm owner sheds light on South Africa’s lingering disparities in land ownership.

“During apartheid, many Black people were forced from their land, and today most major commercial farms remain under white ownership,” it said, adding that many black South Africans in rural areas continue to live in poverty and scavenge for food on farms.