Unravelling the horror in Hartswater
Family stabbed to death, but motive remains a mystery
● Danie Brand taught his daughters that if they were attacked on their farm they should try to not be forced into the attackers’ car.
But last Sunday this was how the 83-yearold retired lucerne farmer, his wife, Breggie, 73, and daughter Elzabie, 54, were taken to their deaths.
The motive for the horrific attack at Hartswater, a small farming town in the Northern Cape, is a mystery.
Only a laptop and a cellphone were taken, and the bodies of the victims were buried kilometres from the road where their vehicle was found.
Police are investigating a case of robbery, but have not ruled out other possibilities.
A police source said: “This doesn’t seem to be a random farm attack. Why kidnap the couple but not withdraw money from their bank accounts? Why bury them where they were found when they could have been left dead at home?”
Police minister Bheki Cele said on Friday that the motive was unclear. “Why would people kill so brutally and take nothing from the farm? We will have to work on the motive.”
Police are putting together a timeline from two cellphone calls the family’s other daughters, Heidie Taljaard and Trudie de Beer, made to their mother on Sunday.
Taljaard spoke to her mother at noon. The call lasted 10 minutes. Moments later, De Beer tried to call her parents and sister, but their cellphones were switched off.
It’s in those minutes that the killers are believed to have struck.
Family friend Steven Bennie was the first on the scene when Taljaard, worried because she still could not reach her parents on Monday, asked him to check on them.
“Initially when I walked around the house I didn’t see the blood. I didn’t see the cars. I thought they were out. When I spotted blood outside the kitchen door I knew there was trouble. The blood led to the carport.
“What I saw in the kitchen was horrific. You could see the extent of the struggle.”
He alerted police and the community watch and a search for the family’s red Nissan Micra and silver Mazda CX-5 began immediately.
The couple’s badly damaged Micra was found a few hours later, abandoned in a field near Taung, about 30km north of Hartswater.
“Next to it was the damaged rim from the Mazda,” said Bennie.
A community watch leader, who spotted the suspects in the Mazda at about 9.30 on Monday night, said they were patrolling when the car drove past them.
“When we began our patrol we prayed to be put on the right road,” said the man, who did not want to be named because of his work.
Following it, the officer noticed the spare wheel on the car, and recalled the damaged Mazda rim which had been found next to the Nissan earlier.
“We radioed the police the number plate. It was false.
“The police stopped the car and found Elzabie’s driver’s licence inside the cubbyhole.”
One of the suspects then took police to the area where they had buried the bodies, 25km away on top of the rocky Ghaap Plateau near Taung village.
Elzabie, a graphic designer, had been buried in a shallow grave 1km from where her parents’ bodies were found. She was found on Monday night by a drone fitted with night-vision cameras.
Her mother, a hairdresser, was found on Tuesday morning buried in the eye of a dried-up spring, while her father was found soon after, 500m away from his wife’s body.
Given the isolation of the site, thick thorny shrubs, rocky terrain and the distance from the road to where the bodies were dumped, investigators believe the killers walked the trio to their graves before killing them.
They were stabbed to death.
Northern Cape police spokesperson Brig Mohale Ramatseba said Khomotso Mpumlwana, 43, Tshepo Visagie, 36, Donald Seolesang, 20, Tshepaone Melato, 19, and Realeboga Manyedi, 18, were charged with murder, robbery and kidnapping.
They were remanded until their next court appearance on August 13.
Mpumlwana’s brother Petric Frane said he was devastated.
“I know my sister. This is not her. She stops us getting into trouble.”
He said during the early hours of Tuesday morning his brother called to say their sister, who made a living renting out rooms, had been arrested.
Frane said his brother had seen a Mazda parked at the family home on Sunday, that there was blood in it, and that their sister had been talking to men who were washing it.
“People have been killed and they are someone’s children. They must get the truth. We all want the truth,” said Frane.
I know my sister. This is not her. She stops us getting into trouble Petric Frane
Khomotso Mpumlwana’s brother,