Chairman of the Agri SA security committee, Kiewiet Ferreira, said the meeting with Tshwete also touched on the need for visible policing, including regular police visits to farms. Ferreira said Tshwete promised that police would pay the necessary attention to stock theft, and more resources were being channelled to units dealing with this type of crime. Representatives of the three countries will meet next week in the Mozambican capital Maputo to decide how to halt the spread of cholera, which has killed hundreds and infected tens of thousands of people across southern Africa since last August. She said 252 Mozambicans had died from the disease in the seven months to September after floods hit the southern African country last February and March. The epidemic picked up again as rains started in November, and Libombo said 33 people had since died from the disease.
Cholera is a bacterial disease spread through water and unsanitary conditions.
It causes diarrhoea so severe that its victims die from the shock of dehydration. The disease has spread through southern Africa in recent months, with outbreaks reported in South Africa, Swaziland, Malawi, Zambia and Zimbabwe. In South Africa, the epidemic, which until December was largely concentrated in the country's eastern KwaZulu-Natal province, has since spread to other provinces, including the economic heartland of Gauteng. The KwaZulu-Natal health department said on Wednesday it had recorded 675 new cases in the past 24 hours, bringing the number of people infected by the disease since August to 21 439. It has been difficult to curb the disease in the province because of the remoteness of rural communities, a lack of health care facilities and the dependence of villagers on polluted streams as their only source of water.