Photo: Willie Rossouw
Two Western Cape farmers, JT Basson and John Woest, both in their sixties, accused of murdering an alleged illegal fruit vendor, Chatwell Rogers on 30 November, have been released on R5 000 bail each.
They appeared in the Paarl Magistrate’s Court on Monday, 6 December, and the case was postponed to January for further investigation, and pending a decision on the matter by the regional court.
A group of more than 50 farmers and farmworkers gathered outside the Paarl Magistrate’s Court to raise awareness about the impact of fruit theft and crime on farmers’ and farmworkers’ lives.
A petition containing 680 names asking for the pair’s release on bail was reportedly also submitted to the court.
Uys van der Westhuijzen, chairperson of Agri Western Cape’s Rural Safety Policy Committee, told Farmer’s Weekly that “we are not here to judge the innocence or guilt of the farmers; the court will have to determine that.
“But we feel that local authorities have failed the community and these farmers, as various calls to intervene in the problem of fruit theft have continuously fallen on deaf ears. Farmers in the region lose fruit worth hundreds of thousands of rand to theft each year.”
The accused’s attorney William Booth agreed, saying: “Fruit thieves have been stealing from the accused and other farmers in the region for a long period of time. We have footage of thieves openly jumping gates, and photos of bags and bins full of fruit being stolen.
“At times, dangerous weapons are confiscated from those pilfering from the farmers, and a panga was confiscated [during] the incident in which Basson and Woest were involved.”
Booth could not say whether a syndicate was responsible for the theft, but said it was a very significant problem, and many of the thieves knew one another.
Although the state was charging the accused with premeditated murder, Booth said the incident did not involve any planning, and constituted a “spur of the moment reaction to a theft attempt”, with the shooting taking place right outside the accused’s farms.
According to a statement by the South African Police Service (SAPS), the suspects reportedly shot at illegal fruit sellers on the Construal Bridge, and when they fled the bridge onto the N1 highway, another shot was fired towards the group, fatally wounding 40-year-old Rogers, who was from Paarl East.
The suspects handed themselves over to the SAPS at the scene.
