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Police in Mpumalanga are investigating a threatening SMS that was sent to five farmers in Ermelo, giving them an ultimatum to vacate their land or be forcefully removed.
Ermelo police spokesperson Captain Carla Prinsloo told a News24 correspondent that two cases of intimidation had been opened over the alarming messages.
The SMS reads: “Vacate your land whyte [sic] man or we will forse [sic] you. Take your wife and children away. We will visit them.”
“There are no relationships between the farmers, except that they all live in this district and that all the SMSes came from the same number. There was no mentioning of a deadline for the farmers to vacate their farms,” Prinsloo said.
National chairperson of security for the Transvaal Agricultural Union (TAU) of South Africa, Henry Geldenhuys, said four farmers had received the SMS on Thursday, May 12, while the fifth threat was received on Monday morning, May 16.
“One cannot just ignore this kind of threat, but I personally think that the farmers should rather worry about what they don’t know. For instance, where were their numbers found? How do they know all five people are actually farmers?” he said.
Geldenhuys said the five farms were located within a circumference of 50km.
