Boy kills farm attacker with cricket bat

Adriana Stuijt's "journalism during apartheid " ^ | 12-20-02 | staff

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		Boy kills farm attacker with cricket bat Pretoria - Dec 19, 2002. One of three farm attackers died during a bloody fight in which a 16-year-old boy armed with a cricket bat and a man armed with a spade defended the lives of women and children against three attackers armed with knives and crowbars.   Ernest Moeketsi (33), one of the attackers, died of his injuries in the kitchen on the farm Kareepoort near Brits in North West. He had been released earlier in the week from a local prison where he was serving time for housebreaking.   Willem Harmse (41), who is being treated for multiple injuries in the Ga-Rankuwa hospital outside Pretoria, said the house was a "bloodbath".   Harmse has several cuts to his head and hands. Three fingers on his right hand and two fingers on his left hand were crushed in the fight.   "I was saved by God's grace and that 16-year-old boy," he said.   Harmse and his family are temporarily living with his brother-in-law Willem Lombard and his family on the farm. Lombard was not at home at the time of the attack.   Lombard's wife Rosemary (38) is in stable condition in Brits Provincial Hospital, where she is being treated for injuries to her head.   Harmse's wife Selma (40) and their children Chantelle (4) and Charlene (18), and the 16-year-old boy were treated for cuts and bruises.   Willie Lombard (10) and his sisters Jessica (14) and Cynthia (15) were treated for shock.   Knives, crowbars Harmse said the attackers, armed with knives and crowbars, tied up two workers. They forced one of them to accompany them to the house, where they gained entrance by breaking the window to Mrs Lombard's bedroom.   Rosemary Lombard put up a struggle when the men shook her. They went to the room next door where Tollie Lombard, her uncle, was sleeping. Harmse said: "Oom Tollie defended himself with a pillow and a piece of tin. The noise woke up the rest of us."   The attackers took on Harmse and the 16-year-old boy in the lounge. The boy may not be identified.   Harmse said: "We only had bar stools with which to defend ourselves."   One "hell of a fight" ensued, during which one of the attackers fetched spades from outside the kitchen door. With these, the attackers hit the bar stools from their hands, Harmse said.   The boy slipped into a room to fetch a cricket bat, with which he hit Moeketsi. Apparently Moeketsi dropped the spade. Harmse went berserk, he said, when he saw his wife lying on the floor and heard his child crying. "I thought I would go crazy if something happened to my family. I hit the man with a spade."   The boy "is very fond" of Harmse's wife and daughters, Harmse said. "His hands are not tied to his body either."   The other two attackers ran away. Moeketsi was dead by the time police and an ambulance arrived.   The attack was the fourth in two months on the farm. The family's five dogs were recently poisoned.Moeketsi had been released earlier from the Losperfontein Prison outside Brits where he was serving a sentence for housebreaking.   http://www.news24.com/News24/South_Africa/News/0,1113,2-7-1442_1299934,00.html		The ethnic cleansing of Southern Africa's commercial farm communities continues while the world remains silent... FARM MURDER TOLL : 1,391   farmers, farmworkers and kin were killed in South Africa since 1994 -- in often very violent, organised attacks, always by young African males (access the expert report here:) 126  farm dwellers killed in Zimbabwe: 5  farmers killed in Namibia: If South Africa's vicious farm murders had occurred in Zimbabwe, these would have been world news. But these  "only" occurred in SA -- and so the rest of the world remains oddly silent. Post-apartheid South Africa is apparently immune from the usual investigative journalism being conducted in the rest of the Western world... (more) Why has the South African farmer become the world's most endangered species? Why are SA's few remaining commercial farmers now most at risk of being murdered in the whole world? They are being  murdered at 274 per 100,000 population group... the highest in the world!  A Nedbank probe recently described these farm attacks as  "deliberately targetting specific homesteads to kill the Afrikaner victims": robbery was not the prime motivation, in fact in 85% of last year's farm attacks, nothing had been "robbed".  With more than half of South Africa's commercial farmers now already having vacated the sector permanently since 1994 -- more than 1-million hectares less maize is also being harvested this year. The entire region with its 120-million people is also plunging headlong into widespread famine-  the WFP and FAO are warning... And all these facts are not unrelated. (more) Farm-attacks report  (more) SA POLICE FARM  ATTACKS INQUIRY WEBSITE: Click link to view SAP Statistics 16 Days of Activism on Violence Against Women and Children Click to sign the pledge 25/11/2002 - 10/12/2002

Brought to you by the Censor Bugbear family of journalists.
Reporting by Adriana Stuijt, Frederick Malherbe, Jack Galt, Pat Mazibuko and Team.

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[chiefqc]

So sad, some of the farm attcakers are still alive. I guess people will have to support these POS while they waste our money living in jail.

[craig61a]

Sounds like Cricket_Bat control legislation is in the wings...

[Wolfie]

Bit of a sticky wicket, eh wot?

[Norman Conquest]

Will the upcoming cricket world cup in Zimbabwe serve as cover for re-arming the evicted farmers?

[ClearCase_guy]

Oom Tollie defended himself with a pillow and a piece of tin.

Sounds like a Monty Python routine. "How to defend yourself with .... a Banana!!!!"

[Maelstrom]

Poor kid will probably wind up in jail if they catch him.

[backhoe]

Bit of a sticky wicket, eh wot?

Ow, ow, ow!

[BenLurkin]

Now, these beet upon farmers definitely DO need firearms.

[dighton]

"Smashing him with that just doesn't seem cricket."

[Monti Cello]

From the article it looks like the kid put him down with the bat, and then the old man finished him off with the spade.

[dfwgator]

What about "pointed sticks?"

[tracer]

The kid is in deep doo-doo now. Cricket bats are on the Endangered Species List....

[Vigilanteman]

Nothing to see here. Just black Marxists killing black capitalists. Time to move on. < /sarcasm>

[gd124]

Some more information and a picture:

Brits victim still in hospital

Brits - A 41-year-old man whose left hand was crushed in a farm attack in Kareepoort, Brits, was still in hospital on Friday, recovering from reconstructive surgery on his fingers, police said.

The attack, in which three intruders armed with spades and knifes got themselves embroiled in a bloody fight with the two families who lived on the farm, occurred in the early hours of Thursday morning.

It made headline news after police revealed that Devlin Harmse, the 16-year-old son of the injured man, Willem Harmse, used a cricket bat to batter one of the intruders, Daddy Moketsi (35), to death.

Moketsi, a former convict, had been out of jail for less than a week when the attack occurred. His two accomplices were still on the run on Friday.

Superintendent Helen Steyn said that Willem, who was initially admitted to Brits Hospital along with his wife Selma (40) and her friend Rosemary Lombard (38), was later transferred to Garankua Hospital for hand surgery.

Selma and Rosemary, seriously injured when repeatedly struck on the head with a spade, were released from hospital on Thursday, said investigating officer Inspector Elias le Roux.

Le Roux said one of the women would need follow-up checks because the nature of her injuries were such that complications, such as brain swelling, might still occur.

Blood everywhere

Steyn said doctors were to treat Willem with anti-retrovirals because his wounds had come into contact with Moketsi's, and there was a good chance that Moketsi, being an ex-convict, was HIV-positive.

Le Roux, who was on his way to the farm on Friday to collect more evidence, said it looked as if "a war" had taken place in the house and that "there was blood everywhere".

"If we catch somebody now we can just draw DNA and place him on the crime scene. The two suspects were also injured cause by the gate where they ran away there was blood dripping," he said.

A total of seven people were admitted to hospital following the attack. They were Chantelle Harmse (4), Willem Lombard (10), Jessica Lombard (14), Cynthia Lombard (15), Charlene Harmse (18), Willem Harmse (41), Selma Harmse (40) and Rosemary Lombard (38).

The Lombard and Harmse children were treated for shock and released on the day of the attack. Four-year-old Chantelle was reportedly severely traumatised from witnessing the attack, Steyn said.

The screams of the Lombard children's father, Tollie Lombard (55), who woke up to find a knife at his throat, alerted the entire household.

The intruders, on entering the property, tied up one farmworker and took another to the house with them - possibly for information on where and how to enter, Le roux said.

Inspector Tyrone Seate said the robbers, who demanded money and weapons from the two families, broke a window pane in the bathroom and entered the premises.

[sheik yerbouty]

Ya beat me to it!

[galt-jw]

how come no one ever smuggles firearms to the good guys?

[Bedford Forrest]

Time for the white farmers to do a little more shoot, shovel and shut up, I would say. Of course the POS Thuggo Mbeki does nothing to stop these cowardly outrages because he is nothing more than an evil racist and a communist.