Despite stock theft having fallen by 1% across the country, the farming community believes the crime has risen on the ground.
The African Farmers Association of SA (Afasa) believes that the national crime statistics released on Friday (2 Sep 2016) portrayed stock theft as having fallen due to a large number of farmers not reporting the cases.
The statistics showed that there were 24715 cases of stock theft reported in the 2015/16 financial year, down from 24965 in 2014/15.
However, in six of the country’s nine provinces stock theft increased, with Limpopo and Mpumalanga leading the pack with increases of 5.4% and 6.6%, respectively.
Trailing behind were Gauteng, Northern Cape, Western Cape and North West.
