Modise in the dock
DETAILS of how National Assembly Speaker Thandi Modise allegedly abandoned and starved her livestock at her Tlokwe farm were revealed in the Potchefstroom regional court yesterday.
Modise is being prosecuted by AfriForum’s private prosecution unit on behalf of the National Council of SPCAs (NSPCA). She faces six counts of contravening the Animals Protection Act.
Modise is accused of having failed to procure and provide adequate feed to more than 147 pigs, more than 59 sheep, more than 11 lambs, more than 54 goats, and more than 25 chickens and geese, that had resulted in their emaciation and death.
Lead prosecutor advocate Gerrie Nel said the NSPCA had been forced to euthanise more than 224 animals at the farm when they visited it in July 2014.
NSPCA senior inspector Grace de Lange testified how some of the animals were found emaciated and some already dead during the inspection at the farm.
“There was no food and there was definitely no water. In this area, I saw numerous dead pigs in various stages of decomposition,” she said.
Defence lawyer Dali Mpofu pushed De Lange to concede that some of the animals would not have suffered as much from hunger had they not been locked inside their enclosures and instead allowed to graze the grass around the farm.
De Lange, however, insisted that there would have been little difference as the farm was dry during winter.
“I agree it was winter and all that, but access for sheep to some grass is better than access to no grass. Are you not able to concede that?” Mpofu asked. De Lange said: “In my opinion, they would have not got much better if someone let them out because the nutritional value of grass in winter is not good. Farmers put out additional feed for animals.”
Mpofu pressed De Lange to concede by demonstrating through some of the photographs that some parts of the farm had longer grass where animals could graze.
De Lange said: “I agree with that, but it still would not be the nutritional value that the animals of different species would need during winter.”
Mpofu interjected: “But that is a different point. You were making a point that there was no grass at all, and we can now see that there was long grass. It might have been of less nutritional value.”
Earlier, police officer Andrew Serame took the stand as the first witness as the official photographer at the farm when the police visited at the invitation of the NSPCA.
A PowerPoint photo album of animal carcasses Serame had complied was displayed in court as he was taken through his evidence by Nel.
Modise has pleaded not guilty to all the charges.
The trial continues today.