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In Loving Memory

Jan Stickling

1962 — 2020

Free State · Truck Driver · South Africa

Jan Stickling · 1962 – 2020

◆ His Life

Jan Stickling was a 58-year-old truck driver from the Free State — a working man who earned his living on the long roads of South Africa, hauling loads across provinces, doing what honest, hardworking men do. He was a builder of this nation in the most quiet and essential way: behind the wheel, keeping the country moving.

◆ His Final Hours

On that fateful day in 2020, Jan was travelling the N11 highway in Ermelo, Mpumalanga, returning home after completing a delivery — a journey he had made countless times before. His truck suffered a puncture. He pulled over. He stepped out to fix the tyre, as any responsible driver would. Four attackers approached. They stabbed him multiple times. Jan Stickling died on the roadside, alone, far from home, doing nothing more than trying to get back to his family.

He was not a soldier. He was not in a dangerous place by choice. He was a truck driver fixing a tyre on the road — and that was enough to cost him his life.

◆ The Crisis Behind His Death

Jan’s murder is not an isolated tragedy. It is a symptom of a deeply wounded nation. Rampant crime in South Africa is fuelled by massive poverty and unemployment — a desperate underclass with nothing to lose. But desperation does not excuse evil. And a justice system that fails to impose consequences only emboldens those who prey on the innocent. When criminals do not fear the law, the law fails everyone. Jan Stickling is proof of that failure.

A Call for Justice

South Africa must find the courage to confront its crisis of violence with real consequence. The men and women who build this country — the drivers, the farmers, the workers — deserve to live without fear. These evildoers are destroying the lives of innocent people who sustain the very economy that feeds them. That cannot continue. South Africa must bring back the death penalty and restore the fear of justice in the hearts of those who would commit such acts.

◆ His Legacy

Jan Stickling deserves to be remembered — not as a statistic, not as a news headline, but as a man, a worker, a human being whose life was worth infinitely more than it was treated on that roadside in Ermelo. May his name be spoken. May his story be shared. May those in power hear it and act.

May Jan rest in eternal peace.
May his family find comfort and strength.
May South Africa find the courage to protect her people.
We pray for an end to the violence that steals our sons and fathers from us.

Written by Collen Makumbirofa

Makumbirofa Farms

www.makumbirofafarms.co.za
admin@makumbirofafarms.co.za

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