Warning: This article contains graphic details that some people may find distressing
Four people have been charged with attempted murder in South Africa over a brutal attack on a cattle farmer, who was assaulted and tortured in what has been described as a “senseless and barbaric” act.
Donovan Marx, 50, was attacked during a house robbery on his farm in Ventersdorp, a small town in South Africa’s North West province, last Wednesday.
Marx was ambushed as he returned home, shot and stabbed and had his ears cut off in the horrific ordeal, police said.
Five people were arrested over the weekend but only four appeared in court on Tuesday.
The suspects, aged between 26 and 56, were charged with attempted murder, robbery and illegal possession of firearms and ammunition.
The fifth suspect has since turned state witness, the North West police chief confirmed on Tuesday.
The horrific attack has caused widespread outrage in a country which is used to high levels of violence.
Police last week explained how the attack on Mark happened.
A group of masked men armed with guns approached a worker at Mark’s house as he was mowing the lawn, they said in a statement.
The attackers then demanded to know where Marx was before tying the worker’s hands and feet with cable ties.
When Marx returned home, police said two of the suspects allegedly approached him and shot him in the upper body.
“They [then] dragged him inside the house, tied his hands and feet with cable ties, and allegedly stabbed him.”
The suspects then ransacked the house and took three firearms from a safe before escaping with Marx’s van.
The ordeal ended after the farm worker managed to free himself and call for assistance.
Marx was rushed to hospital, where he remains, but may need prosthetic ears after surgeons were unable to save his own, local news site IOL reported.
South Africa’s Agriculture Minister Willie Aucamp condemned the attack on Marx, adding there was no “place in our country for such senseless and barbaric acts”.
The chair of parliament’s police committee, Ian Cameron, praised police for the swift arrests and called for a “strong, properly investigated case” to follow.
Some right-wing groups have used such attacks on white farmers, who are often from the Afrikaner community, to say there is a genocide against white people in the country – a claim that has been widely discredited.
Although the claims have been dismissed by every political party in the country, including those representing Afrikaners, US President Donald Trump has repeated them and has offered white Afrikaners asylum in the US.
South Africa’s latest crime statistics, covering the period between April and June 2026, do not specify how many attacks took place on farms and only recorded one robbery in a rural area.
However, police data show most victims of crime in South Africa, including on farms, are black.