The "farm rape" row that has been raging in the Rawsonville district for months has taken a new turn, with reports that the key player has admitted to lying.
The saga began when an explosive report published in a Cape Town newspaper in mid-September claimed that a Rawsonville farmworker had been gang-raped by four farmers and that police had refused to take action against her attackers.
NGOs and women's rights organisations expressed outrage, and the Western Cape's agriculture and community safety MECs, Cobus Dowry and Leonard Ramatlakane, launched investigations.
Police this week announced that they would not prosecute the alleged rapists due to insufficient evidence.
And Die Burger newspaper reports on Friday that the woman who claimed to have been raped has admitted to having lied.
The Cape Argus could not independently verify this, but Dowry said on Friday he had been given similar information.
"My office has spoken to the office of the Director of Public Prosecutions. I have been told that the woman went to the police and made a new statement that she wasn't telling the truth the first time, that she was lying.
"She had been warned by the police that if she made a new statement she could open herself up to prosecution, but she wanted to tell the truth."
Dowry said he was waiting for a copy of the police report, which he had requested from Ramatlakane in mid-December.
"It now appears all that fuss was... done without a basis, without facts on the table, just rumours," Dowry said.
"Women on Farms (an NGO representing farm workers)... we support them financially. But I've said to them: 'Before you make allegations, make sure you are sure about your facts, don't grab the first person who comes to you and says I've been treated this way or that way.' "
On learning that the farmers would not be charged, Dowry's office issued a hard-hitting statement this week, saying that the MEC was "extremely disturbed by the malicious and irresponsible actions, libellous statements and blatant distortions of happenings, which caused severe divisions in the Rawsonville farming community.
"These pronouncements and statements, at the very least, deserve an unqualified apology.
"Rawsonville and the broad farming community have been unfairly branded nationally as a community where matters of crime go unpunished and where, especially farmers, are implicated in criminal activities without any justice.
"I call on individuals, labour unions and the NGOs to rather focus on serving their respective members and to call a halt to malicious actions."
Women on Farms' Fatima Shabodien has reportedly called for Dowry to be fired for displaying a lack of empathy for farmworkers' grievances.