Last Sunday (28 March 2010), the story below was tucked somewhere inside the the Sunday Times. Seven days later Eugene Terre'Blanche's murder was the headline story in the same newspaper and to be fair in many other nwes organisations. The so called civil rights group AfriForum had nothing to say about this (I checked their website). The murder of Terre'Blanche must not be allowed to mask or hide the terrible crimes committed against farm workers and indeed against the children of farm workers!
Mthimkulu Mashiya ---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: <[email protected]> Date: Tue, Apr 6, 2010 at 3:58 PM Subject: Karoo farmer may be jailed for life To: [email protected] Karoo farmer may be jailed for life A Karoo farmer convicted of murdering the 13-year-old daughter of his farmworker, faces being jailed for life. Read more<http://www.timeslive.co.za/local/article376980.ece/Karoo-farmer-may-be-jailed-for-life> Karoo farmer may be jailed for life Mar 28, 2010 12:00 AM | By Garden Route Media ------------------------------ A Karoo farmer convicted of murdering the 13-year-old daughter of his farmworker, faces being jailed for life. ------------------------------ Current Font Size: ** The guilty verdict handed down this week to Piet Botes, 44, after a lengthy trial in the Oudtshoorn Circuit Court, has gone some way towards easing racial tensions inflamed by his crimes. He was due to be sentenced on Friday for killing Elizabeth Martiens in 2007 and molesting two sisters aged 13 and 15 in 2006. But prosecutor Meg Allie asked Judge Vincent Saldanha for a postponement to hear the specialist testimony of a top police psychologist. Botes, owner of three farms in the Leeu-Gamka area between Oudtshoorn and Beaufort West, offered to give Elizabeth a lift to her mother's house in Merweville after she spent the Easter holidays visiting her father, Samuel Martiens, three years ago. Instead, he took the child to an old farmhouse on his farm Weltevrede, where he murdered her and dumped her body in an empty water storage tank, where it was found three months later. Her new school suitcase and her clothing were thrown on her body and set alight. The advanced state of decomposition of Elizabeth's body prevented any investigation into possible sexual assault. Botes and his wife, Sonette, were arrested in July 2007 on charges of child abandonment after Elizabeth failed to arrive home from her farm visit, but the charges were changed to murder after police found Elizabeth's body. Sonette then admitted to lying about accompanying her husband on Elizabeth's last journey, and was convicted and received a suspended jail sentence for perjury. Samuel Martiens said that Botes had betrayed him. "I trusted him. I worked 10 years for him and I never thought for a moment that he would do such a thing to my child." Sentencing was postponed to May 6 and 7. -- -- You are subscribed. This footer can help you. Please POST your comments to [email protected] or reply to this message. You can visit the group WEB SITE at http://groups.google.com/group/yclsa-eom-forum for different delivery options, pages, files and membership. To UNSUBSCRIBE, please email [email protected] . You don't have to put anything in the "Subject:" field. You don't have to put anything in the message part. All you have to do is to send an e-mail to this address (repeat): [email protected] . To unsubscribe, reply using "remove me" as the subject.
