Death penalty ban has led to increase in serious crime

What is the report of the heinous murder of yet another three of our most valuable assets, our farmers, doing hiding away on the second page of our newspaper (“Three more die in farm attacks”, June 25)?

Instead, it should be blazoned in the biggest black letters across the front pages of all the newspapers in the country, in every language.

Has the public become so immune to this scourge which is engulfing our country, that they glance at the article and then turn the page to read something . . . anything . . . else?

Surely our successive governments since 1994 must have realised that the banning of the death sentence has not worked! Not worked? It has resulted in an unprecedented escalation of murder, rape and all other unspeakable crimes.

Can the government not realise that jail is not a deterrent to these criminals?

It gives them board and lodging for a long time, which many of them do not have outside prison.

But to face death is another thing altogether.

So for heaven’s sake, try this alternative punishment of death.

It can’t fail worse than has the abolition of the death sentence.

And, Mr Ramaphosa, please realise that without farmers there will be no agriculture and no food.

So now the time has arrived . . . no, is long past . . . to do something concrete to stop this hideous slaughter.

Not in the government’s slow time, but right now!

Do not speak of the “rights” of the criminals, when the “rights” of the victims have been so cruelly obliterated.

Let there be mass rallies in every city, town and village throughout the country to get the powers-that-be to realise that this tragic situation must stop immediately and finally something done about it.

Anything else cannot be tolerated.

And to those families who have lost their dear ones, let all the citizens of this country voice their sympathy to them, while urging the government to stop this slaughter and get to doing what is urgently necessary.