JOHANNESBURG, South Africa (AFP) — A white South African farmer and two of his workers were in court Friday accused of murdering two black women and feeding their remains to pigs, shocking the country.

Zachariah Olivier, 60, and workers Adriaan De Wet, 19, and William Musoro, 45, are facing murder charges after the decomposing bodies were discovered in a pigsty on a farm in the northern province of Limpopo on August 20.

Police began investigating after a 45-year-old woman was reported missing after visiting the farm on August 17. She was accompanied by another woman, aged 35.

“Both women sustained gunshot wounds and a 47-year-old foreign national man, who was with them, was also shot and hospitalised,” police said.

Reports said the man was the husband of the younger woman and the trio had strayed on to the farm to salvage expired foodstuffs dumped there. But the motive for the crime remains unclear.

Dozens protested outside the magistrate’s court at Mankweng, a town about 350 kilometres (217 miles) northeast of Johannesburg, to demand that the accused be refused bail.

The bail hearing was postponed to September 10.

The killings caused outrage in South Africa, which suffers from a high crime rate with homicides among the highest in the world.

The women’s wing of the ruling African National Congress (ANC) party said it was “horrified and outraged” and called for “decisive action to curb the violence against women”.

The main opposition uMkhonto weSizwe party said it “condemns… the atrocious murder of two black women by racist white farmers”.

Police figures released Friday showed that nearly 6,200 people were murdered in South Africa between April and June this year, a 0.5-percent decrease over the same period a year earlier.