By Derek VanBuskirk, Daily Caller News Foundation | June 11, 2025
Elmarie Eastes-Schutte shared her story of a home attack on her smallholding in South Africa’s North West with the Daily Caller.
In 2009, she and her husband, Koos Schutte, had just arrived home when three men — one armed with a pistol — ambushed them. Koos stood between Elmarie and the attackers, giving her time to run for help.
She hid in a nearby building and tried to call her father but was in too much shock to connect the call. When the noise subsided, she stepped outside — only to be met by gunfire. The men surrounded her, yanking at her jewelry and phone.
“They were like animals on me,” she said.
Though she managed to connect the call to her father, he could only listen as she begged for her life.
Dragged inside, Elmarie found Koos lying on the floor, severely beaten but still alive. “There was just blood everywhere,” she said.
She was also beaten by the men and they threatened her repeatedly to reveal where her money was.
“Stand up, you white bitch. I’m gonna kill you. Where’s the money?” she recalled them shouting.
Terrified, she pleaded for her life, thinking of her three daughters who weren’t home. “Please, just don’t kill us,” she said.
The attackers eventually fled in her car, later using it to rob a gas station. She managed to find help from a neighbor, but the police never responded.
Koos died 12 days later at the age of 36, never getting to say goodbye to his children.
“My kids must now grow up without a dad,” she said.
A neighbor of the Schuttes’ was shot in the face the same night that Koos died, according to Elmarie.
Elmarie said that she had to go to the police station to convince them to investigate the scene of the crime. She similarly had to pester the police to move forward with the investigation, she explained.
This lack of police response to and prosecution of farm attacks is not uncommon.
According to a recent report by AfriForum, a volunteer neighborhood watch group that often fills in the gaps of the police, less than half of farm murder cases in South Africa even lead to an arrest, and only a fraction result in a conviction.
The chief spokesperson for AfriForum Community Safety, Jaques Broodryk, told the Caller that there are more private security personnel in South Africa than the combined number of police and military personnel.
Broodryk said that many people reach out to AfriForum before even calling the police. Even though AfriForum cannot respond with the same force and authority as the police, victims know they will at least bother to show up at the scene of the crime.
Broodryk took the Caller out on patrol and showed AfriForum’s new infrared drones and trained K9 units that it purchased to compensate for the lack of police response in the country.
Since Koos’s murder in 2009, South Africa has recorded thousands of farm attacks and hundreds of farm-related murders, according to annual reports by AfriForum. Farm attacks increased each year from 2011 to 2019, according to their data.
This trend in violence disproportionately affects the white minority of South Africa, leading President Donald Trump to call it a genocide. His administration is making plans to receive minority South African refugees by the thousands.
Derek VanBuskirk is a reporter at the Daily Caller News Foundation.
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