Free State farmers are spending hundreds of thousands of rand per season hiring security guards to protect their plantations from increasingly brazen raids by organised gangs of maize thieves.
Gangs of up to 15 thieves raid maize fields at night, sometimes removing sack-loads of maize that is then resold, either as food or fodder, Free State Agriculture (FSA) safety risk analyst Jane Buys told TimesLIVE Premium.
“Though it is a seasonal crime, usually restricted to between March and July [the key maize harvest time], this year it already started in mid-February,” she said. “The farmers are putting in place a lot of security measures, such as electric fences around their farms, but those fences also get cut.”
Farmers were spending R200,000 to R500,000 or more per season on security measures.
FSA called for “major interventions by the farming community in collaboration with the SAPS and National Prosecuting Authority” to address the organised nature of the scourge, which sometimes involved groups crossing from Lesotho.
“They steal corn in sacks, put it on donkeys' backs and then move across the border like that. Where farmers confront them, they run away and the donkeys and corn are recovered. These types of incidents usually take place during the night.”
Organised crime
She said the groups’ modus operandi and volume stolen strongly indicated organised crime for resale, rather than opportunistic “hunger crime”. The thieves were sometimes dropped off by taxis and left to fill several large 50kg bags, then collected again by the drivers. Only the maize cobs were targeted, not farming infrastructure, said Buys.
FSA safety representative Rudi Jansen van Vuuren said the Allanridge-Odendaalsrus area had seen a definite increase in maize theft compared with previous years, and security measures were proving to be ineffective.
“Worrying are the large numbers of criminals who strike the fields. We have had cases where taxis drop off five groups of between eight and 15 people and pick them up again. The criminals simply overpower the security guard, steal the equipment with which the guard has to communicate and even threaten the farmers,” he said.
In some cases security guards were also involved in the theft. “Certain guards have already been dismissed from service as farmers notice their involvement. In most of the cases, farmers did report that the guards are a big expense but that they do help to limit the impact of this type of theft.”
Buys said the thieves also robbed guards and threatened farmers trying to prevent crop losses. “Sometimes there is nothing left for the farmers to harvest — it is losses of millions of rand. They [farmers] are saying it is happening on a daily basis.
“This is really a safety risk affecting the whole of the farming community,” added Buys.
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