Joubert Gert

Age 66. farm Grootrietvlei, which is situated in the Stoffberg farming district outside Middelburg. The tragedy unfolded on the evening of Monday, October 10, 2022, when an ambush turned into a violent assault, leading to his hospital admission and subsequent death on Sunday, October 16, 2022. Around eight o'clock in the evening, Gert was at the farmhouse with his eighty-year-old sister, Susan Luus, who was affectionately known as Sannie. The house was suddenly breached by attackers who had allegedly been hired to work on the farm only about a month prior to the incident. The intruders launched a savage physical assault on the elderly siblings. One attacker violently struck Susan Luus over the head with the flat side of a panga weapon and smashed the dinner plate she was eating from directly against her head. The criminals turned their full fury on Gert Joubert, brutally hacking him across the head with a sharp panga. The blade fractured his skull and caused severe intracranial trauma. The attackers ransacked the home and fled into the night, leaving the farmhouse covered in blood. Family members and emergency services arrived to discover a bloodbath. Gert was rushed under critical care to the Witbank Hospital, where surgeons performed an emergency, hours-long brain operation to relieve massive bleeding on his brain. Following the surgery, he was placed into a medically induced coma in the intensive care unit to allow his body to stabilize. His sister survived her physical wounds, and his relatives, including Susan's daughter Gerda Kyprou, immediately gathered at the hospital to watch over him. The fight for his life ended on October 16, 2022. As the medical team slowly attempted to ease him out of the induced coma, his severely traumatized body went into profound shock, and he passed away with his family waking by his bedside.