Leeuw testified that Fourie was murdered to frighten farmers from their farms so that the ground could be "put in possession of the people".
Dr Pieter Gous, president of the FSAU, said on Tuesday that this evidence confirmed that the union had been right when it said that this and other murders could be regarded as politically inspired. He asked whether this was not blatant proof that farmers had been deliberately misled by the SA Police Services and the government before the 1994 elections as to the reason for attacks on farmers.
Gous said that, at the time, the FSAU had drastically differed with the SAPS over the motive for the murders. Maj Gen Tertius Calitz, who was head of the SAPS in the Free State at the time, had said that no proof could be found that the murders were politically inspired.
He said that political parties and groups that had accused the FSAU of politicking would now have to admit their error. The political motive for murders was further confirmed by evidence to the Commission on Monday that the murders of four whites in an Odendaalsrus squatter camp were political assignments.
Gous called on the SAPS and the government to openly declare they were still delibertately glossing over and hiding the political motive behind murders and attacks on farmers. Five years after Fourie's murder farmers were still being murdered and driven from their farms. It was thus difficult for farmers and their families to believe that present murders differed in any way from those in the past and were, in many instances, still politically motivated.