An account of the tragedy that occurred in Sutherland

An account of the tragedy that occurred in Sutherland

The media has been swarming Sutherland since the incident on Friday 14 January 2011. A French couple started shooting at a group of police officers and two men, one of whom is my husband. They killed a police officer and injured another, forcing my husband and two others at the scene to run for their lives. I have a need to write this article even though I am dead tired and wish I could just go away until this whole thing blows over. This is what I have to say about everything. So read it and please do not ask us any more questions – we are all tired, shocked and we need to focus on our everyday lives and businesses.

The French couple lived on the farm for almost 12 years. We did know them, but please understand, we did not live on the farm. And my husband and I only visited the farm during university holidays, so we had casual engagements with them, we chatted about life and philosophy. Since we did not spend that much time with them – only three times a year or so, and only for one evening at a time – we did not feel the need to talk on a more personal level. We saw them as open minded people, with interesting philosophies, a little strange but not in a very bad way. We spent time in their home, and never saw anything odd. Obviously we did not go into every room – would you go into a colleagues’ house and check out every room? No, we stayed in the living room, kitchen and dining area.  Also, they were quite open to sharing thoughts and ideas and we were able to tell them about our beliefs, no matter how different it may have seemed.
During the day, the couple were quite relaxed, reading and studying nature. It seemed like a lovely lifestyle. They were older and we saw it as a kind of retirement for them. They enjoyed reading stimulating books – especially more scientific books – and listened to interesting music. Agnes enjoyed dancing and Phillipe was always very calm, collected and organized.
Over the years we started coming to Sutherland less, as we travelled a lot for our jobs and were mostly away over weekends. We invited the couple to our wedding in 2008, because we’d known them for so many years. I experienced them as more strange than usual, but ascribed it to their withdrawal from society. They had been spending less time with people - not really coming into town anymore and became more closed off, i.e. they would not really exchange conversation but instead wanted to talk only about their philosophies. We felt our relationship had deteriorated a little and we had less contact with them, but still interacted with them whenever we went out to the farm.

In 2009 we moved back to Sutherland and started our own businesses.  Since the original agreement was for the couple to live on the farm for five years only, we felt it was time for them to leave. We wanted to renovate the house and use it as an additional place for family to stay while visiting the farm. They were asked to leave in December 2010, but didn’t. We were concerned that they had run out of money, especially since they were becoming increasingly skinny. Also, they stopped talking to us and did not even greet us when we were on the farm over a weekend in November 2010. The next step was to write them a letter so that we had something on paper. The request had now been moved to the end of February 2011. And this is where everything started.

I was not involved in the incident, so I cannot comment about it directly at all. I knew the French couple as skinny, harmless people, they had grey hair with dark eyes – and please, do not take this the wrong way! I have extremely dark eyes! This does not say anything about them, it is merely a description! Their withdrawal from society became weirder, yes. They were intense people and this was reflected in their eyes, yes. They had extremely different ideas and philosophies, yes. They did speak about Ramtha’s teachings yes, but we do not know enough to really know how this relates to anything. And we never called it a cult. We don’t know enough to make such assumptions.
Oh, and I never saw the black cat, I’d only heard that she’d recently gotten one. I have a cat myself, and I don’t think the cat symbolises anything. We are not sure where this cat would have come from and no one has seen the cat since. Maybe it was a wild cat and there are lots of mice in the veld. But please do not take this in a funny way. They also had a dog in the past - why wasn’t that mentioned! Nothing was meant by this at all!

Okay, so this is my story. I do not want to presume to know why and how they could kill an innocent human being, and shoot at my husband and his brother whom they’ve known for 12 years. I can only say that they were strange, secluded themselves progressively more from society, were extremely suspicious of the ‘system’ and everything that catches you in its trap. But we really saw them as harmless.

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