NEWS: Caged woman: I was fine
‘It’s ridiculous for people to say I was coaching her’
ACRADOCK farmer’s wife who appears to have coached a woman on what to say after she was spotted in a cage on the back of her husband’s bakkie, defended the video posted online yesterday.
This comes after a photograph of a woman in a sheep pen on the back of a white Isuzu bakkie caused outrage when it was shared on social media yesterday.
The picture of Linda Steenkamp, 27, of Zuurfontein, sitting in the cage was taken just outside Cradock.
Leta Erasmus’s husband, Cradock farmer Johan Erasmus, 41, gave Steenkamp the lift on Tuesday.
“It’s ridiculous that people think I was coaching her. My husband and I offer people a lift all the time and now I don’t think we will do it again,” Leta, 53, said.
“I just told her to look at the camera and tell the people what happened and why she chose to sit on the back of the bakkie.”
Leta said this was done because of the backlash on social media.
“I felt we needed to make the video so that people can hear her side of the story,” she said.
But even though a pregnant Steenkamp said in an interview with The Herald earlier yesterday that she was fine being confined in a sheep pen as it was extremely hot that day, Johan has been labelled a racist.
And this is why Leta posted her video online in an attempt to “set the record straight”, but at the start of the video, Leta already interrupts Steenkamp, who has only uttered a few words.
“Tell the story that you asked for a lift into town and then continue telling your story,” Leta is heard saying.
Steenkamp, who refers to Johan as a “baas” in the video, says he dropped her off in Cradock.
But Leta then jumps in again, saying: “You didn’t want to get in the front because you guys are used to getting in the back of the bakkie because you enjoy the wind.”
Steenkamp then nods, with Leta saying: “We think we are doing a good deed but we have seen that other people are making it look bad.
“Say that you are grateful every time you are offered a lift because you live very far from town.”
Social media users were not buying it yesterday, with many saying Steenkamp had been coached and made to rehearse her version.
Kgomotso Motong wrote on Facebook: “Haibo! I’d lie too being interviewed like that‚ and the white woman holding my shoulder.
“I didn’t even finish watching the video – you can just tell it was rehearsed. Poor woman.”
Leta said: “I would never coach her, I am not stupid.”
“All we did was give someone a lift, which was supposed to be a good deed, but now we are seen as racists.”
Speaking to The Herald just hours after the social media storm erupted, Steenkamp – who is four months pregnant – said she had needed a lift to a nearby clinic and had asked Johan to drive her there.
“I didn’t want to sit in the front of the bakkie because it was hot,” she said.
“I also didn’t want to get hurt so I sat in the cage.”
Steenkamp said it was normal for people getting a lift to sit in the back of the bakkie.
She said she was unemployed and had been living with her boyfriend and two children on the Zuurfontein farm, about 60km outside Cradock for the past two years.
Johan said he did not understand what he had done wrong.
“Those people from the farms don’t know about [sitting] in the front. They always jump in the back,” he said.
“She asked me for a lift and I agreed. She jumped in at the back.
“I don’t see it as a cage. I did not see anything wrong with her sitting in it,” he said.
“She herself climbed into [it] and I dropped her off in Cradock.”
The SA Human Rights Commission’s Abongile Sipondo said an investigation was under way.
Police spokeswoman warrant officer Louis Stone said no case had been opened yet.