Securing our view to the future

Iwas chatting to a Cape olive farmer the other week, a real character formed by the sunbaked earth and the sporadic rain. “If was in the South of France I’d be an actual GOD,” she said, laughing, but instead she labours daily under the strain of two massive bank loans.

She’s always teetering.

She hasn’t had a holiday in forever.

“But look at this view!” she said. “Look at this place. We might be murdered in our beds, but just look at it!”

I looked, and I bought the olive oil – a third of her business dried up overnight with the disappearance of tourists – and it was magnificent.

But also terrifying. The property is remote, hard to patrol, with numerous potential breeches to the perimeter, and loyal staff juxtaposed by unknown seasonal workers.

Just look at that view though! I thought about her again when AfriForum announced the 2020 statistics for farm murders last week – 63 last year, following 382 farm attacks, which is horrific though no more or less so than other murders.

And yet… I thought about the numerous isolated farms I passed; I thought about the Free State farmer who only days ago shot dead three intruders who attacked him as he opened his door in the morning; I thought about Brendan Horner, whose slaying caused the local farmers, siek en sat, to torch a police vehicle in protest.

I thought about the flight path into SA, the land seen from above where arid nothingness gives way to the green polka dots of largescale irrigation, the thirsty riverbeds identifiable by the surrounding ribbons of agriculture.

These vast farms gradually turn to smallholdings, shantytowns, houses, and finally row after row of cluster homes as Joburg approaches, with all these people needing feeding.

Now I object to murder being turned into a political or a race issue. I’m infuriated when one killing is deemed more terrible than another, one victim more pitiable.

And there is no actual farm genocide – we know that.

There is “just” murder, everywhere.

However, it is true too that our farmers are so vulnerable and yet so essential, for our food, our grain, our olives … for our view to the future.