The grisly allegations have sparked debate over some of the country’s most explosive issues, including race, gender-based violence and farm ownership.
The white-owned farm was well known to residents of a rural community in South Africa as a place where they could get discarded food. But when two Black women ventured onto the farm several weeks ago, they never made it back.
The farm owner and two of his workers are accused of fatally shooting the two women and then dumping them in a pigsty, where, the police say, they found the bodies decomposed and partly eaten.
The episode in Limpopo Province, northeast of Johannesburg, has sparked widespread outrage and ignited debate over some of South Africa’s most explosive issues: race, gender-based violence and the ongoing tensions over land between commercial farmers, who are often white, and their Black neighbors — which have sometimes resulted in bloodshed.
A judge on Wednesday delayed a bail hearing until Nov. 6 for the farmer and the two workers, who are still in custody.
The victims, Maria Makgatho, 44, and Locadia Ndlovu, 35, trespassed on the farm in search of food in mid-August after a truck from a dairy company dumped expiring goods there, according to prosecutors.
The farm owner, Zachariah Johannes Olivier, and the farm supervisor, Andrian Rudolph De Wet, 19, both white, had planned to shoot any trespassers who came onto the property, prosecutors said. Ms. Makgatho’s husband was shot, but survived and escaped, prosecutors said.
