[Daily Mail, where America gets its news] They came at breakfast time to murder Theo Bekker, smashing an iron bar stolen from his own farmyard into his skull before slitting his throat so he bled to death. His four teenage attackers then tied up his wife, Marlinda, and put a plastic bag over her head before she slipped into unconsciousness. Mercifully, she survived.
| Twenty-four hours before Mr Bekker's killing, the nation's most controversial politician, Julius Malema (leader of the Marxist-Leninist Economic Freedom Fighters party (EFF)), had chanted an anthem entitled 'Kill the Boer' — a term for white farmers — at a rally of 90,000 followers. |
In South Africa, where the murder rate is soaring, the killing of 79-year-old Mr Bekker on July 30 still had the capacity to horrify. This week at the Afrikaans Dutch Reformed church half a mile from the Bekkers' cream-coloured farmhouse, Minister Johan Bouwer told the Mail: 'The couple came here to Sunday services. Marlinda was a regular every week; Theo would attend if he was not busy on the farm.
'At a memorial service for him, the church was packed, with white Afrikaans farming families and black people from the area who paid their last respects to him.' |