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Tracey-Leigh Frankish, Marius Labuschagne murdered, Farmall AH

 
Smallholders north of Johannesburg live in fear – vacate area in large numbers

Frankish Tracey-Leigh murdered Farmall Aug 18 2009 smallholding Lauren Cohen reports on August 18 2009 that five days after “flower child” mom Tracey-Leigh Frankish’s screams scared off would-be burglars, house robbers struck again, this time taking her life.

A cheap TV set, hi-fi and a small amount of money were the only things stolen from the murdered 33-year-old Gauteng sales representative’s cottage in Farmall, an agricultural holding north of Fourways. She worked at the food manufacturing company Ma Baker.

Johan Burger, senior researcher at the Institute for Security Studies, who last year co-authored a report on crime and public security in South Africa, said the murder highlighted how political promises had not been kept as far as the eradication of farm attacks was concerned. “The conclusion we came to in our report was that there was a vacuum [in crime-fighting regarding] rural safety.” Burger said this was a result of the phasing out of South African National Defence Force units, or commandos, deployed specifically to patrol rural areas in South Africa since 2003.

“[The phasing out] was not supposed to happen until sector policing, police reservists and crime-combating units were in place. In almost all [rural areas] we visited in our research, none of this had been done,” Burger added.

Frankish’s murder means that her seven-year-old son, Taidg, will grow up without a mother. The break-in happened in the early hours of Sunday morning, when Taidg was with his grandparents, Fred and Helen Britz, at their Bryanston home.

  • “We’ve told him what happened, but I don’t think he realises what death is all about,” Fred Britz said.
    “He said: ‘They’ve killed my mom, they shot her’. It’s tough, the circumstances of her death. We never thought it would happen to us.”

Frankish, who was in the process of divorcing her husband, who lives in the UK, had been leasing a cottage on a plot.
Private security company RSS Security responded to a panic signal followed by an alarm signal at 12.47pm.  A security officer who arrived at the premises six minutes later found the security gate on the front door had been forced open.
Frankish was found kneeling in front of her bed, with a gunshot wound in the head.

  • “When the security officer went outside to radio for medical back-up he saw three suspects fleeing into the bushes and gave chase,” said RSS Security managing director Sean Mooney. The unidentified men got away.

Dion Stephens, a school friend, told The Times that Frankish had been a humanitarian.  “She wanted to fix the world we live in, quit her job, teach people how to grow vegetables and live a self-sustainable life. The people she wanted to help were the people who murdered her,” he said.

Friends have been posting messages on Frankish’s Facebook page, where Stephens yesterday asked people to honour her memory by wearing purple or turquoise, “her favourite colours”, to her memorial service.

Dean Dawson, of food manufacturing company Ma Baker, where Frankish worked, said staff were distraught at her murder.  “It feels surreal. It’s disturbing. She was a flower-power child, if I can put it that way, friendly to everybody.”

Murder blamed on victim by cop: ‘the door was left unlocked…’

Douglasdale police spokesman Inspector Balan Muthan confirmed a murder case was under investigation – and blamed the murder on the victim: “There are no suspects. The front door was left unlocked. Police and the security firm reacted within minutes, but the suspects had fled and the area is so dark at night,” Muthan said. A memorial service is being planned at the Emmarentia Botanical Gardens in northern Johannesburg this weekend. 
http://www.newsvibe.co.za/external.php?node=135471

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Marius Labuschagne murdered August 1 2009 Farmall smallholdings

Lauren Cohen also reported on August 20 2009 in The Times of Johannesburg that even before Farmall resident Tracey-Leigh Frankish’s murder, the northern Johannesburg smallholders had been living in fear of “marauding crime gangs”. Jerry de Beer, who lives on a plot not far from where burglars shot and killed Frankish, 33, last weekend, told The Times that the single mother’s murder was the second in the area in just two weeks.

“Marius Labuschagne, living on a plot in a caravan, was murdered on August 1. Only his cellphone was taken,” De Beer said.  “Residents are living in absolute fear every night as the marauding gangs go about their deeds unhindered,” he said.

  • De Beer has been keeping track of crime in his area and his records show that there have been nine armed robberies and 27 burglaries in the area this year alone.

“Barely half of the 114 plots in Farmall are occupied; residents are starting to abandon their properties out of fear and desperation.

“We have no means to protect ourselves — normal electric fences, beams and alarms are not a deterrent anymore.
“Even armed response when activated cannot guarantee that you will survive an attack from these ruthless, murdering thieves,” De Beer said. And the police, he claims, are not pulling their weight because they have failed to investigate three armed robberies committed on his property alone.

“There are so many trees”, whine the cops….

Balan Muthan, spokesman for the Douglasdale police, who are responsible for the area, said extra police officers and vehicles have now been brought in.  “We have also stepped up the number of patrols and the mounted unit is coming in,” Muthan said. 

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