The lack of effective fencing on South Africa’s land borders contributes to easy access for farmers seeking good grazing, and cattle thieves, among others.
On what is called ‘illegal grazing’, the Joint Operations Division of the SA National Defense Force (SANDF) said it is common in areas where there are no or damaged fencing. Furthermore, where a river or watercourse is a national boundary, the low water levels make it child’s play to enter and leave South Africa without documentation.
On its eastern border with landlocked Lesotho, the Free State province faces what the Democratic Alliance (DA) provincial leadership calls “a serious threat” from cross-border crime. According to Roy Jankielsohn, murder, arson, human and drug trafficking, vehicle theft syndicates, livestock theft and “pasture theft” are impacting communities in the border region of the Free State and Lesotho, as well as farmers, their families and workers along the border. border.
“The lack of visible policing and the ineffectiveness of SANDF interventions leaves farmers in the Free State at risk from biosecurity and crime that impact residents’ livelihoods, local economies and employment of the Free State. Recovery rates of stolen livestock, vehicles and equipment are low and there is a lack of meaningful government interventions such as roads, police and fencing along the border,” he said in a statement.
In November, soldiers deployed on the Free State-Lesotho border rounded up and seized livestock (cattle, goats and sheep) worth R2.9 million belonging to Basotho farmers grazing on South African pastures .
Jankielsohn has a multi-disciplinary team, with representation from the SA Police Service (SAPS) and SANDF, as well as community policing forums (CPFs) and civilian security associations and organizations aligned with his party’s rural security policy. crime. The DA policy provides for rural safety task teams, similar to the team set up by Jabu Mbalula, MEC (Executive Council Member) for Community Safety, Roads and Transport.
That multidisciplinary team deployed on September 10 to combat illegal mining has so far made 9,665 arrests and 2,557 convictions for crimes ranging from murder, illegal mining, possession of gold-bearing material, illegal immigration and corruption to possession of stolen property.
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