Last month, police minister Bheki Cele announced that 26,322 sheep and 14,000 cattle had been stolen in SA over a three-month period, with more than 7,000 cases of stock theft opened.
It was a serious problem that required serious attention, Cele said at the time.
Stock theft task teams were to be established in areas that were especially problematic.
In this newspaper today, we report on the financial implications of stock theft — which accounted for R1.4bn in losses nationally, of which R260m was in the Eastern Cape.
And these are just the ones that are reported.
Many other cases of theft go unreported, and in some areas such as the rural parts of our province, these matters are dealt with by the communities.
There have been several reports of stock theft-related vendettas which led to killing sprees and mass injuries, with the police urging communities to work with them rather than taking matters into their own hands.
We do not condone violence and communities taking the law into their hands.
But it speaks to the frustration and desperation of these farmers, some of them mere subsistence farmers who rely on their stock for survival.
When their sheep or cattle are stolen, for many it is their livelihoods taken from them and the food from their mouths.
Agri Eastern Cape rural safety subcommittee chair Alfonso van Niekerk said many farmers had given up reporting cases because the investigations led to nothing.
This matter requires the community working with the police and patrol forums to dismantle the entire value chain.
It also requires responsible citizens.
If there was no demand for meat on the black market and at heavily reduced prices, stock theft would not be as prevalent.
Cele said last month: “If we are to rid the country of stock theft, we have to tackle the whole value chain, from the top right down to which butchery this stolen meat ends up [in].
“This crime, which I believe is a form of economic sabotage, needs to be tackled not just by the police but also have the buy-in of other departments that can assist in the tracking, tracing, marking and movement of stock”.
We could not agree more.