Farmers in the eastern Free State continue to count their losses due to the high rate of stock theft in the area.
The sentiments were shared by livestock and crop farmer, Morgan Barrett in Ficksburg during engagements with ActionSA leader, Herman Mashaba.
Ficksburg has been identified as one of the 14 hotspot stations for livestock theft when the National Rural Safety Strategy (NRSS) was launched in 2011 in Bethlehem.
Barrett lost 62 of his sheep six months ago.
“It’s a multi-million-rand syndicate that’s operating here and the police are doing absolutely nothing. It’s going to be sorted out in one of two ways. Option one is the people, the farmers, the black farmers, the people from Lesotho, are going to lose absolute faith in the police and the rule of law and they’re going to take law into their own hands and you gonna get kangaroo courts and killings and which is not the way it should be.”
Herman Mashaba says tampering with food security is a serious threat to the economy.
“One mistake that we can make as society, as a country if we want to destroy this country, we must actually threaten food security. So this is something that is for me, close to my heart, it is actually because it involves the food security of our country, but at the end of the day one needed to get a personal experience.”
