Twelve black workers lost their jobs and Afrikaner farmer Len Pienaar of Gamalakhe outside Margate, suffered R3.2million in property damage when members of the local community invaded and torched a plastics-recycling factory on his farm. Journalist Barbara Cole writes that as word spread, dozens of farmers were on standby to go to the aid of the embattled Len Pienaar - who was previously warned 'he would be killed in the event of further trouble'. The large brick warehouse which was torched was a plastic-recycling business which he also ran on the premises. The twelve workers employed there will have to be retrenched, he said. The Margate SAPS have merely noted down a case of arson in a docket but he has not been given a case number, said Pienaar.
Hours after the blaze, members of the local black community of Mavundla at Gamalakhe staged an 'organized march' under the protection of the SAPS, protesting against the fact that the community had recently lost their land-claim against 27 local white farmers in court. The SAPS has refused to intervene in the arson attack and have openly refused to protect the white farmers in the area from reprisal-attacks. Pienaar has suffered attacks against his farm for the past eight years, and has put up with hundreds of people who tresspass on his farm. They cut through his R180,000 fence to use his farm as a shortcut to and from Margate and Ilvongo.
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