AfriForum supports family and farmworkers following Bonnievale farm attack

AfriForum’s Trauma Support Unit this week visited the farm Kapteinsdrif near Bonnievale where a farmer, Tool Wessels, was murdered and his wife, Lizel, was tortured on 14 May 2019. The unit gave emotional assistance and support to the about 15 farmworkers and also launched a group defusing effort.

The workers, especially the person who found Wessel’s body, and also the Wessels family’s domestic worker, are badly traumatised by the events.

The Trauma Unit is also going to visit the family in hospital to give emotional assistance and will try to determine if there is a need for further support among the community or the family.

“This is a very tragic incident. The fact that the workers are badly traumatised by the cold-blooded murder of Wessels and the macabre way his wife, Lizel, was tortured, will definitively have a lasting effect on these people. However, this is not the only trauma they have to deal with. The possibility that they will not be able to earn any further income because of the death of their employer, is putting additional pressure on them. Reality is that every farmer who is killed, basically is a business that has to close its doors,” says Johan Kloppers, Trauma Support Officer at AfriForum.