Groblersdal - A man was fatally wounded in a robbery on his farm between Groblersdal and Dennilton early on Monday morning, Limpopo police said.
Four robbers broke into the farmhouse through a bathroom window around 4.30am, after poisoning the farmer's two dogs, Colonel Ronel Otto said.
“Mr Rudolph Pretorius was shot in the face and his wife 1/8Hanneli 3/8 was assaulted with a firearm, but she did not sustain any serious injuries.”
The robbers demanded keys to the safe and stole jewellery and firearms.
It was unclear whether anything else was stolen, Otto said.
Pretorius, 54, was taken to Groblersdal Hospital, but it was decided he should be transferred to a hospital in Gauteng. He died before he arrived at the second hospital.
No one had been arrested by 3pm.
AfriForum on Monday said it would analyse the local police station's resources.
“According to community members, police in this area have a gigantic task at hand as they have a serious shortage in manpower, vehicles and resources,” the civil rights organisation's head of community safety, Ian Cameron said in a statement.
Support and maintenance for local police stations was key to rural safety, he said.
AfriForum said the SA Human Rights Commission recently agreed to hold a hearing about farm attacks and whether police were doing enough to address these crimes.
In a separate incident, a farmer was shot and wounded in an attack on his farm near Reitz, in the Free State, on Saturday morning.
“Three armed men accosted him on his farm on Saturday afternoon. He was shot in the stomach and in one arm,” Sergeant Mmako Mophiring said.
The farmer, Andre Greenen, managed to shoot one of his attackers, who died on the scene.
The other two fled on foot, Mophiring said.
Greenen was recovering in hospital. Nothing was taken from the house and no arrests had been made.
Sapa