CAPE TOWN, June 5 (Xinhua) -- President Cyril Ramaphosa has moral obligation to take a stance on farm murders as the scourge continues unabated in South Africa, a civil rights organization said on Wednesday.
AfriForum, which is dedicated to the protection of farmers in the country, made the remarks after Ramaphosa's spokesperson Khusela Diko told media on Tuesday that the president will not specifically air his views on farm murders because it is the responsibility of the police.
On Tuesday, AfriForum released its latest statistics for farm attacks and murders since the beginning of 2019 till the end of May. AfriForum could verify 184 farm attacks and 20 farm murders in this period.
Farm attacks in the Western Cape province increased extremely, in such a manner that more than double the number of attacks were reported from January 1 to May 31 this year, compared to the same period in 2018, AfriForum said.
Last weekend, Stefan Smit, a wine farmer at the Louisenhof wine estate in Stellenbosch outside Cape Town, was murdered, sending shock waves across the farming communities.
This was the second farm murder in less than a month in the Western Cape province.
The opposition Democratic Alliance (DA) has called for an urgent meeting with National Police Commissioner Khehla Sitole to discuss how to curb rising farm murders in the country.
In South Africa which is among the countries that have the highest crime rate in the world, the rise in farm murders has become a focus of attention.
