In addition to being an area where livestock roams – not always of own volition – in search of grazing, police and soldiers on the eastern Free State border with landlocked Lesotho have to contend with livestock theft.
Evidence of this came from Police Minister Senzo Mchunu in response to a question by Patriotic Alliance (PA) National Assembly (NA) public representative, Tandiswa Marawu.
She was informed police dealt with 1 283 cases of stolen cattle in Ficksburg and surrounds in the 2023/24 financial year. This ties in with what a Parliamentary oversight committee was told in October. While on an oversight visit to eastern Free State, the National Council of Provinces (NCOP) select committees tasked with agriculture, land reform and mineral resources and economic development and trade heard Golden Gate Highlands National Park, 100km from Ficksburg, was used as “a corridor” to move stolen livestock, mostly cattle but also horses from commercial farms, across the border.
Soldiers deployed on this stretch of South African land border regularly find themselves rounding up and herding cattle, goats and sheep grazing on land owned and managed by South African agri-businesses. In April last year, as an example, soldiers deployed on this border in terms of Operation Corona saw to it livestock worth R5 million plus was taken off South African pastureland and moved to either police impound areas or other suitable sites until claimed and the applicable fines paid.
Mchunu assured his questioner no registered police firearms were involved in the 1 200 plus livestock thefts investigated in Ficksburg and surrounds.
He further informed Marawu “the mandate of the [SA Police Service] stock theft and endangered species unit is to investigate all cases of stock theft and crimes related to endangered species, without any exception”.
On rural safety and cross-border crime Mchunu said there were regular cross-border and bilateral operations between Free State police and the Lesotho Mounted Police. Rural safety committees and stock theft forums are in place at station, district and provincial levels to deal with rural safety in general. This includes planning joint operations, conducting intelligence briefings, attending to reported cases and providing feedback on the status of cases to complainants.
There are also, what the Ministerial reply terms “blue-white-light” weekly operations in rural areas, in conjunction with communities and private sector security companies addressing general and cross-border crime.
