Community Feedback

Sandy la Marque
Chief Executive Officer
KwaZulu-Natal Agricultural Union (Kwanalu)

Sandy la Marque, the chief executive of the KwaZulu-Natal Agricultural Union (Kwanalu), extended her condolences to the Ismail family.

Kwanalu works very closely with the police structures to find workable solutions. I must be honest that in many of the farm attacks that happened over the past four weeks the police have been very good in their response.

We would like to see law enforcement structures and government scaling up their operations in the rural areas such as Weenen; because such criminal incidents devastate not just the affected families but also communities as they affect agricultural production and deter investors.

These criminal incidents negatively impact on food security and investment in rural areas and obviously, we’re very concerned about the increase.

For further information on Kwanalu, please check out their website.

KwaZulu-Natal Agricultural Union (Kwanalu)

Shane Reynolds 
Weenen Farmers Association 

The incident has come as a huge shock and has taken the community by surprise. 

The whole community is very shaken up by it, especially the brutality of it. You see these incidents happening elsewhere and it’s always concerning but this brings it right to our doorstep. We are all grieving with the family. They’ve been part of this community for a long time.

Unfortunately, they could not get the alert out fast enough for us to react. Farm attacks have been quiet in Weenen. We have to look at our security planning. 

We condemn the attack in the highest regard. It is sad for our community. The Ismail family were part of the community for many decades.

The area had not had any farm violence for more than a year but they had been observing similar attacks around the province and the country. The police station was also having problems with Covid-19.

This incident really hit home.