Fifteen years ago on 16 April 2000, the elderly Afrikaner farmers John and Bina Cross were tortured to death on their farm near
Gravelotte, Pietersburg, Mpumalanga, South Africa. Their sadistic black killers tortured them for five hours. Ephraim Mokwana and Michael Malamela were imprisoned for life. They shot John Cross, 77, four times and poured boiling water down his throat, then shot off the top of his skull. His wife Bina, 76, was tortured with boiling water. All this was arranged by the servant who had worked for them for 15 years. One week before the double-murder, she had simply disappeared.
Their daughter Lita Cross Fourie, founder of the non-profit organisation Tabita, was badly traumatised by her parents' torture-deaths. She has since then dedicated herself to helping the victims of farm-attacks in South Africa. After she was contacted by them, she visited the killers of her parents in prison in 2006 - trying to get some answers... She wanted to know the reasons wjhy they had tortured her parents to death. She wrote me: "My father was 77 and my mother 76. They both were tortured for five hours before they were finally shot dead. My father was shot four times, my mother three. The nozzle of the shower's hot-water tap was pushed down my father's throat and opened up. My mother was tortured with boiling water. This was all arranged by the servant who had worked for them for 15 years. I visited the killlers Mokwana and Malamela in the prison in 2006 - after the two men themselves had
contacted me with the request that they wanted to see me. Shortly after the visit I heard from them again: they claimed that I had 'traumatised them' with my questions.'
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Her parents' attackers were caught just days after the attack. In their possession, police found John's rifle and his watch. But for their daughter Lita Cross Fourie, the capture of the two men brought her little consolation. She soon realised that there was little psychological help available to the victims of farm attacks and their loved ones who are left behind. "People would not want to talk to me because they did not know what to say. You walk alone. They take your freedom, you can't sleep, you replay it all in your mind," she recalled of that time.
Fourie explained: "All the time you are hoping to get answers. You get little pieces from here and there. Some of it you get from the police. Your last hope is to get all the answers in court. But when court ends you still have questions."Fourie decided to use her experience to help others in similar situations. She began counselling survivors and family members. Fourie lives in Lephalale in the Limpopo province but her calling has taken her around the country."You see hate, anger and most suffer terrible nightmares," she said. Sometimes helping someone out can be as simple as just asking them how they are doing.
"One woman told me that I was the first person to ask her that. She used to suffer terrible nightmares where she would be trying to wash the blood off the walls and it would not come off," Fourie explained.
Fourie said one of her most difficult tasks is trying to get survivors to open up. But she has developed a simple strategy: "I tell them to write the story down and then send it to me. Paper is not judgmental." Like her, many of the relatives of farm-attack victims have nagging questions that plague them. Some of them want to see what their dead loved ones looked like when their bodies were discovered. They want to see crime-scene photographs and police videos.Among the farming community, there is even a nickname for police crime videos. They are called silent movies because there is no sound, just the blood-splattered violent images of the aftermath of an attack. "I advise them not to look at them," Fourie said...
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