The pressure is mounting on government to intervene and speak out about the rising number of farm attacks in the country. Constant worries about their safety coupled with high labour costs and other financial constraints have brought many farmers to their knees.
Johan van Niekerk has a farm outside Delareyville in the North West. He was attacked by five men in 2016 who stabbed him 39 times and slit his throat.
He spent 15 days in a coma in ICU and to this day he suffers speck impediment.
It was just another ordinary day for farmer Johan van Niekerk, that in a second turned horribly wrong. Van Niekerk was attacked as he returned home from his early morning chores.
“When I was coming home I saw underneath the light, I see a guy is standing there and while he is standing there I knew immediately there is something wrong. Because my dogs were not with me I asked him what do you want? So two other guys come from the back of a tank and they come from behind and they hit me, here in my head with a panga and I fell on the grass. The two guys, one jumped on my hip and the other one put his knee on my head and they cut my throat here three times, that’s why I put my thumb on to the vein. I was just laying down and playing dead and while I am laying on the ground the other three guys are hitting that door. I go into a room, there is the window for my wife and I know she is going to hear me because the dogs are making a very big noise.”
His wife Sonia was locked inside the house and managed to come to her husband’s rescue.
“The dogs were with me in the bedroom and they were acting in a different way and I realised it is abnormal the way they reacted. They barked so I went to this window, I saw two guys small guys waiting for me there with knives and if I opened the door they would stab me. I went to this side and I saw Johan inside here so I left this and I want and I opened the door and I went out. The people who attacked us were standing there looking at us and then I found Johan on the ground, so I took Johan. I don’t know how and I grabbed him, I took him into the house and I put him on the floor in his office and then I locked the door and he said phone my brother Christo he must come immediately I am going to die,” explains the wife.
Van Niekerk miraculously survived but was hospitalised for six months. He still has difficulty speaking and suffers short term memory loss.
Incidents such as these have forced farmers to be more alert. Farmer Dewet Marx says he keeps his firearm with him all the time.
“I have my firearm with me 24/7 and every person that comes to my farm I regard that person as a suspect,” says Marx.
Van Niekerk says he has forgiven his attackers but he still wants to ask them why did they want him dead.
“They didn’t take my purse, they didn’t take my cell phone nothing, why are they doing that, that’s all I want ‘to know. I see problems with a lot in the future if we can’t solve this problem because we are going to defend ourselves, I am not going out, I am going to shoot, I am sorry but I want to live,” says Van Niekerk.
