I UNDERSTAND the importance of the Reitz Four case to your readers. I strongly condemn the actions of these students and want them to receive the appropriate punishment for their deeds.

I also strongly condemn any murder, for example the murder of Leon and Hetta Steyn of Nelspruit.

Though both incidents happened outside Gauteng, your newspaper gave much more coverage to an incident of insult than to a brutal murder.

Is insulting a more serious crime than murder? Doesn't the media have the responsibility to educate the nation on matters across the spectrum?

What makes most farm murders of interest to your readers is the fact that it is black on white and that most of your readers are black.

I taught at a Johannesburg with school with predominantly township children. Whenever I mentioned the problem of farm murders many of the pupils were quick to label me a racist.

The pupils are unaware of such problems and claim that if it were a problem they would hear about it in the townships.

During the apartheid years white people also refused to believe the brutalities of apartheid because the Afrikaans press, especially, hesitated to comment on it.

Keeping to matters on one side of the spectrum puts you on par with those Afrikaans newspapers.

Imagine how much pain South Africa would have been spared had those newspapers given both sides of the story to its readers?

Cobus Olivier, Kangwan-do, South Korea