Farm Attacks: Safety and security in rural areas must be fixed, DA

The Democratic Alliance (DA) has called upon the government to investigate allegations of poor service delivery at the Bishopstowe police station following the latest farm attack during which a suspect was shot dead on Wednesday.

“According to residents, the attack on a farmer and his wife was thwarted after the man shot and killed one of the suspects. A second suspect is believed to be on the run,”  DA KZN Spokesperson on Agriculture and Rural Development, Martin Meyer said.

Meyser said the “deteriorating safety situation” in KZN’s rural areas would only improve if there was a concerted effort from both the South African Police Service (SAPS) and communities to address farm attacks.

“The Bishopstowe community and security companies are going above and beyond what can be expected of them, using patrols and drones in a bid to find and apprehend the suspects involved in yesterday’s incident,” Meyer said.

“Regrettably though, the lacklustre response from SAPS leaves a lot to be desired. The DA does not believe that claims by officers from the Bishopstowe police station – that they do not have sufficient vehicles to deal with complaints – hold water,” he said.

Meyer said that in a recent written parliamentary reply to questions submitted by the DA, the MEC for Community Safety and Liaison had indicated that Bishopstowe, which has been rocked by farm attacks, was in fact one of the few rural police stations that has more vehicles than required.

“Either the Bishopstowe police officers are not being honest, or the vehicles are not in working order or the allocation of vehicles required by the station is not accurate. It is also clear that the training of officers is falling short if SAPS is refusing to open cases unless there are injuries,” Meyer said.

“This is extremely short-sighted. If SAPS had acted and opened cases when previous attacks took place, they might have been able to prevent future incidents.”

Meyer called for both the MEC for Agriculture, Bongiwe Sithole-Moloi and KZN’s new Community Safety and Liaison MEC, Peggy Nkonyeni, to immediately visit Bishopstowe SAPS to investigate.

He said the DA also planned to meet with community members next week.

“The general state of safety and security within KZN’s rural areas is of great concern to the DA. As a result, we are also in the process of planning a province-wide conference to include rural security companies, agricultural organisations and other key stakeholders in order to discuss the true situation and how we can best improve it,” he said.