Shades of "In cold blood" !

What would Truman Capote have made of this? Namibia has a reputation still of being a sleepy, underpopulated, safe and out-of-the-way place. Not so. Acts of bizarre violence happen in the quietest of settings. Outside the really sleepy town of Mariental, the farm manager and family including the pregnant wife, were tied up and shot, but not before they had been coerced to phone the owners of the farm in Windhoek, luring them to return urgently as there was a problem (some problem!) When the unsuspecting middle-aged owner couple arrived, they were seized, tied to beds, and burned alive. Why? Not all that senseless - it seems that a hired thug was obtained by the otiose son of the farm owners to dispose of them and claim 'his' inheritance. The trial with its grisly details continues. Will a famed Namibian novelist (with which the country is also rather underpopulated) arise to tell the story, like Truman Capote?

The picture above incidentally is taken from the Windhoek Observer, a unique smudgy broadsheet edited by a local legend armed with an English dictionary circa 1876 edition. Sample prose (can be seen if you have enough zoom): "Chief Inspector Manfred Sass, that brilliant virtually incomparable police sleuth, who also, unknown to all, had an appointment with an unnatural death, being a road accident, only a few months after this photograph was taken!"

But modernisation cannot be denied - the paper has now an email address! When I first saw the 'publication' I thought it was a spoof, but as with many other things.........