SA man gets life term for killing Indian-origin farmer

The Pietermaritzburg high court sentenced Zibonele Mbhele, 22, to life imprisonment for murdering 63-year-old Daya Moodley.

The charred remains of Moodley was found in the boot of his car in his farm in an area known as Boboyi last Monday by police after his wife Indrani alerted family members when he did not return home.

Police arrested three men including Mbhele in connection with the murder. Two others are still in police custody.

Moodley's close family friend Raj Govender said Moodley and his wife had moved out of the farm to live in the town of Port Shepstone a few years ago.

"But Daya continued to run his farm with some workers. We have been living and working on our farms here for more than 80 years and we have never had any problems", he said.

"The murder of Daya makes us very angry because we provide jobs and a service to the community. It's a great worry for all the other farmers still on farms in outlying areas", he said.

Govender said the farmers and their families were now living in fear. "We've had a police watch here but this has now been withdrawn and we don't know what we are going to do."

Moodley is the latest of a number of Indian farmers who have been killed since the early 1990s.

The Indian-origin farmers in the Port Shepstone area are descendants of early Indians who had settled in the town and other small settlements all along the coast to the north and south of Durban after completing their indentures since 1860.

For more than 100 years right up to the early 1990s, Indian-origin farmers were the main providers of vegetables and fruits to markets in Durban and other towns.

But over the past 14 years most of them were forced to move out of their farms after being plagued by burglaries, break-in, harassment, intimidation and even murders.

Most of the farmers abandoned their lucrative farms and moved to urban areas of Durban, Verulam, Tongaat, Stanger, Umzinto, Umkomaas and Port Shepstone.