Farmers' leaders requested a meeting with President...

Farmers' leaders requested a meeting with President Thabo Mbeki to convey the findings a memorandum and discuss urgent steps to stop the attacks on farmers. Kobus Visser, spokesman for Agri SA, said according to their statistics, farm attacks and murders have increased and they foresee things getting worse, should the government fail to act. During the year 2000 alone there were 739 farm attacks, 109 murders, most of them in Mpumalanga, KwaZulu/Natal and Gauteng. Agri SA said it was also examining the weaknesses in the criminal justice process, in particular, why it does not serve as a deterrent to criminals, and was assessing the death penalty as an element of punishment.