Marais Francois Guillaume

Age 26. Around nine o'clock on the morning of 15 September 2011, his wife, Ina Marais, had briefly driven away from the homestead to offload goods while Francois stayed behind to fix breakfast for their young children. Unbeknownst to the couple, three armed attackers had already breached the smallholding, accosting and tying up one of their farm workers. When Ina returned and another worker took their utility bakkie to fetch more goods, that worker was also ambushed and the three men came storming directly into the kitchen. The couple's three small sons—Francois, aged four, Markus, aged three, and Konraad, aged two—were in another room when the kitchen was breached. Francois Marais immediately engaged in a fierce, desperate hand-to-hand fight with the three armed men to protect his young family. During the violent struggle, the attackers stabbed Francois repeatedly and shot him before panicking and fleeing the homestead empty-handed without stealing any belongings. Francois was rushed to the hospital but died from his severe wounds on Saturday, September 17, 2011, a day that coincided with his second son Markus’s third birthday. His parents, well-known business people in the Brakpan community, were left to grieve alongside his widow Ina. The crime was recorded locally by journalist Thelma Koorts for the Brakpan Herald, and formal estate tracking was later processed through legal system frameworks.