Towards the end of his days, my grandfather spent most of his time reflecting on how his life had panned out, from growing up on a farm through times as a migrant worker, until old age.
After a few years of battling with diabetes, he had a leg amputated and finally died in a hospital bed in 1997. But not before he left our generation with a wealth of his memoirs, notably around the socio-economic and political dynamics of South Africa as seen through his eyes.
Flashbacks on this man’s life played out in my mind in the evening of Workers’ Day as I sobbed while listening to an SABC current affairs radio show, which was transmitted live from Newcastle, KwaZulu-Natal, where ordinary people were reliving the atrocities they were subjected to under the iron fist of the white farmers on whose land they lived with their families.
This account, particularly of what is happening in the local Normandien farm, was covered by the national public broadcaster recently, with Agriculture and Rural Development MEC Themba Mthembu seen trying to resolve the issues.
Despite having all the ingredients of the country’s apartheid past, with women, children and the elderly being persecuted as if our human rights-based constitution is only a fallacy, this story has still failed to draw the attention of the mainstream media in the way that reports about some sections of our society calling on President Jacob Zuma to step down have been published.
An avid admirer of Nelson Mandela, Willy, as he was affectionately called by his wife, once said in 1995: “My grandchildren, you are so lucky to have grown up at this time. Things have changed so dramatically from what we saw as we grew up. Now you are free as a people of this country; you have dignity just like all the other races.”
He was comparing our situation in a democratic South Africa with how he grew up under acrimonious conditions while his family resided on a farm that belonged to a farmer somewhere around Vryheid and Babanango in the hinterland of the province’s Zululand region.
At some point in his early teens, grandpa recalled, he was once chained to a log while forced to work after he had been caught by the farmer trying to make a bid for freedom from that hard, daily labour, which he and his siblings were subjected to along with his entire family as part of paying for their stay on the “white man’s land”.
After some serious whipping by the farmer, his food would be brought to him on that very spot where he also had to relieve himself throughout the day.
So when I heard the people who dwell on the farmlands nowadays reflecting live on Ukhozi FM between 6pm and 7pm on Monday last week, about how they were being persecuted by the land owners, I wondered how my grandfather would be feeling since he left this world celebrating what he thought was a free nation where there would no longer be domination of one man by another.
When helpless people are being maimed in the manner that has been described by the victims, I wonder how Nelson Mandela would feel after having worked so hard to preach and implement his organisation’s policy of reconciliation.
While sections of our country obsessed about how some within the working class booed the president at the main May Day rally in Bloemfontein, grass root human beings were painfully sharing how the farmers in Newcastle, Piet Retief and Utrecht have used their private security to unleash a reign of terror upon the people who would have been born and bred on this land until the advent of colonialism, by the way the favourite ideology for Hellen Zille and her ilk.
Based on what was said on the radio show, the farmers have also the protection of our own laws since they practice their brutalities under full state police protection.
The representations made by the residents were reminiscent of the testimonies during the local Truth and Reconciliation Commission if not Germany’s Nuremberg Trial, except the latter two were formally instituted by the state while the reflections of the farm dwellers were simply as a result of the public broadcaster’s initiative.
One would expect that instead of being caught in the current web of factional politics, the socialist partners in the Tripartite Alliance, namely Cosatu and the SACP, would rather be focusing their energies on supporting the government to try and resolve this ticking time bomb.
Because if this remains unresolved, it has the potential to ultimately bring our economy to its knees, on a far bigger scale than the junk status downgrade of the country.
One victim said: “We are fed up with these farmers. It is not as if we are scared to die. We just hope the government will quickly help us, but if not we are fed up now. We will rise.”
And history tells us that when people feel they are not being heard, somehow they do find their own way of getting the attention of the authorities.
If you look back to the 1789 French Revolution which eventually collapsed the despotic era of the monarchial system and the 1917 Russian Revolution which crushed the Tsarist autocracy, it becomes clear that radical and liberal ideals have a way of inspiring a coup against unfair domination.
Back home, the surge in the culture of violent public protests is a case in point.
Thanks to the birth of freedom in 1994, people now know the true taste of human rights and freedom, and that it is possible to rise against oppression and topple it.
And it is possible that the suffering being experienced in KwaZulu-Natal may also be the norm in other commercial farm regions in the Karoo, Limpopo and the Free State.
Which means that it needs only a single insurgence in one part of the country before flames are seen across the whole country.
This is actually the issue that should be the main concern for all of us as a nation as it impacts on the ordinary masses of our people.
Farm owners’ associations such as Agri-SA, political and church formations would do well to join traditional leaders, who have already called for renewed vigour to try and quell the persecution of farm residents.
In the same way that we see NGOs and the academia providing support to communities living in informal settlements, foreign nationals and students calling for fees to fall, we should be seeing an avalanche of criticism of the atrocities taking place on farms, which often, regrettably so, enjoy very minimal mainstream media coverage.
We wouldn’t want a situation where people would start to wish that the Azanian People’s Liberation Army, infamous for their alleged farm killings, was still active among us.
If the nation fails to speak out against, and put an end to, these farm persecutions, then we face the risk whereby some among us would miss Peter Mokaba for his ill-famed “kill the boer; kill the farmer” slogan.
But we don’t want that.
For we all have agreed that it was indeed healthy for our country to usher in the democratic dispensation based on the tenets of reconciliation.
Mchunu writes in his personal capacity.