Diversity + Proximity: "South African farmer shot, had ears hacked off and almost castrated by barbaric robbers"

The New York Post reports that Donovan Marx, a white South African farmer, "had his ears hacked off by 'exceptionally brutal' robbers who had already shot and stabbed him — and even planned to castrate him, according to reports." Except, as you read the article, there is no indication that it was a robbery, but appears to simply have been pure terrorism:

    Two barbarians stormed into one of his barns soon after his wife, Louise, left, shooting Marx in the back and stabbing him in the leg to stop him from fleeing.

    As he collapsed in a pool of blood, they held him down and hacked off his ears — chopping them into pieces to make it harder for them to be sewn back on later, according to a neighbor and friend.

    “They also tried to cut off [Donovan’s] genitals but luckily a worker showed up and the [robbers] then made their getaway taking Donovan’s farm pick-up to escape,” the neighbor wrote online.

    The torturous duo fled the scene without taking any of the farmer’s possessions in what the leader of South Africa’s right-wing Freedom Front Plus party called an “exceptionally brutal” attack. 

The article notes that "[a]uthorities have not made any arrests and have not suggested race as a motive."