Life sentence for farmer who fed ex-worker to lions

A white farmer was sentenced to life in prison today on a murder conviction for throwing one of his former black workers into a lion enclosure.

Mark Scott- Crossley and one of his employees were convicted in April of the January 2004 killing of Nelson Chisale in a case that shocked a nation which is still coming to grip with its apartheid past.

Scott-Crossley’s employee and co-defendant, Simon Mathebula, was sentenced to 15 years because the judge said there were substantial and compelling circumstances to justify a lesser sentence.

Chisale, 41, had been fired two months earlier for apparently running a personal errand during working hours.

When he returned to pick up some belongings, he was beaten with machetes, tied up, driven to a nearby lion reserve and thrown over the fence.