Inspector adds animal cruelty charge to stock theft case in Charl Cilliers
Marius van Reeuwyk van Reeuwyk believes this additional charge of animal cruelty will add to the severity of the case, the police investigation, and ultimately lead to a harsher sentence when the culprits are caught and tried.
An additional case has been opened at the Charles Cilliers Police Station relating to more than four dozen pregnant sheep that were recently stolen, tied up, and left to die in the veld.
A case of stock theft had been opened, but Marius van Reeuwyk, chief animal welfare inspector for the South African Animal Welfare Inspectorate Association (SAAWIA), last week also weighed in with a charge of animal cruelty.
“These animals endured horrendous suffering at the hand of the stock thieves.”
Van Reeuwyk believes this additional charge of animal cruelty will add to the severity of the case, the police investigation, and ultimately lead to a harsher sentence when the culprits are caught and tried.
Ridge Times reported in the August 1 edition on more than 40 ewes found in a dip on July 24. The sheep were hobbled with baling twine – a method of restricting an animal’s movement by tying a front leg to the opposite hind leg and vice versa.
They had been stolen from Jaco Goosen’s farm, Meyersvlei, and chased several kilometres at a fast pace on July 20 before being hobbled and left immobile in this manner for five days.
According to Deon Grobler, livestock foreman on Meyersvlei, 11 of the sheep had died by the time he and a colleague, Marno Griesel, found the stolen sheep. He had to put down another four back at the camp.
“The sight was grotesque. Dead and barely alive animals were tossed on top of each other. We had to drag the live animals out from under decaying and burst-open carcasses. Their legs were bound so tightly that the blood circulation to their hooves was cut off,” Grobler said at the time.
Many of the animals that survived the ordeal struggled to walk on their injured and swollen legs or even to stand up when the newspaper visited the farm on July 27.
Grobler and his team have been putting tremendous effort into saving the sheep by hand-feeding them and regularly helping them stand up to get the blood circulation in their legs going again before their hooves rot off.
Grobler told the newspaper this week that another sheep or two had to be put down, but the rest seem to be improving. The spokesperson for the Charles Cilliers police, Sergeant Nompumelelo Dlamini, said no one had yet been arrested.
She called on the community and farmers to work together in fighting stock theft in the precinct. Anyone with information can contact the Charles Cilliers SAPS on 082 494 4756 or 082 772 1895.
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