South African prosecutors have formally withdrawn charges against a farm worker accused of killing two black women and feeding their bodies to pigs.
Adrian de Wet is one of three men killed last year when Maria Makgato, 45, and Lucia Ndlovu, 34, while searching for food at a pig farm near Polokwane, northern Limpopo province in South Africa.
Their bodies were then allegedly given to the animals in an apparent attempt to dispose of the evidence.
De Wet, 20, turned to state witnesses when the trial began Monday and said farm owner Zachariah Johannes Olivier shot and killed two women.
According to the prosecutor and his lawyer, the farm’s supervisor, Mr. De Waite, will testify that he was coerced when he was forced to throw the body into the pig’s shell.
William Musora, 50, is another farm worker and is the third defendant. He and Olivier, 60, have not entered the request and remained in prison.
Mr. De Wet’s lawyer said he had disclosed the night when Ms. Meccato and Ms. Endelof were killed in August 2024.
Shortly after the court adjournment, he walked out of the court as a free man and was driven away by a lawyer, while Ms. Magato’s brother Walter Makgato sobbed outside the court building.
He told the BBC that the release of a man allegedly murdering his sister meant he would not serve the justice.
Mr. De Wet will be detained before the trial is over.
The case has aroused widespread outrage throughout South Africa, which has exacerbated racial tensions between black and white people in the country.
This is especially true in rural areas of the country, although the racist system ended 30 years ago.
Most private farmland is still in the white minority, while most farm workers are black and have poor salaries, which has caused dissatisfaction among the black population, and many white farmers complain about high crime rates.
The trial is scheduled to resume on October 6.
