Fear, Insecurity and Alienation

Abstract

Looking back on my time in South Africa, one of the most vivid pictures that comes to mind is of one of the many visits I paid to farms owned by Afrikaners in the area round Louis Trichardt. This particular farm was a bustling hive of activity with several black farm labourers working intently on a welter of different tasks. The lush, abundant garden round the farmhouse indicated that this 60-acre farm enjoyed plentiful supplies of piped water. However, just beneath it, obscured by trees, was a stark reminder of the social hierarchy left by apartheid. For, if one peered downwards through the foliage, one saw below a broad, barren-looking expanse of plain, dotted with townships. That land formed part of the black ‘homeland’ of Venda; land onto which blacks were eventually moved after much of their own territory had been taken away from them and given to white settlers.¹ The owner of this farm, Pieter De Wet, claimed the Vendas had failed to utilise the potential of the land they had had bestowed on them by whites.²