Farm murder rate at 19-year low, says AgriSA
Agricultural organisation AgriSA’s rural safety director warns of high degree of violence and brutality in rural areas due to inaccessibility
Farm murders are at their lowest than in the past 19 years, a report by agricultural organisation AgriSA has found. The report‚ Farm Attacks: One of Agriculture’s Challenges‚ was released on Thursday. AgriSA used police crime statistics that show 47 people were murdered on farms in 2017-18 and there were 561 farm attacks. The year with the highest recorded number of farm murders was 1997-98 when 153 people were murdered. The number of recent farm attacks almost halved from the highest recorded number of 1‚069 in 2001-02. In total there were 1‚733 murders on farms and 12‚567 farm attacks over nearly two decades.
AgriSA rural safety director Kobus Visser said people living in rural areas were vulnerable because of the lengthy response times and the remoteness of farms. "This offers the attackers an opportunity to linger on the premises for longer‚ with a greater chance of the victim being subjected to a high degree of violence and brutality‚ compared to crimes in urban areas whe...
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