Vanessa Le Roux
A few days ago journalist and TV presenter Heindrich Wyngaard left a teaser on Facebook about a major announcement.
Many of us assumed it was a new work venture. But we were shocked to find out the big news in an article in an Afrikaans publication, the following day, with the headline “Bruin mense kry hul eie AfriForum”, coupled with a photo of Heindrich Wyngaard and CEO of AfriForum, Kallie Kriel.
I have spoken out against this collaboration and so did the majority of the people of colour – the so-called
coloureds. Many aired their disappointment, shock and even utter disgust. A few days later Wyngaard attempted to do damage control in an interview with Lester Kiewit, saying the Cape Forum is not an extension of AfriForum but merely using the party’s resources until the organisation could find its feet. But there is no free lunch, and Wyngaard is not so special that AfriForum will serve a dish because they like his bow-ties.
Wyngaard, like you, I originate from a rural town called Oudtshoorn. As a child growing up in the 1980s, many of my memories are filled with yellow vans chasing our people into a black township. We stayed on the main road, near the township, so we heard every stun grenade and saw the burning tyres during protests.
My mother, as a nurse, attended political meetings because our GP, Dr Mike Hendricks, recruited nurses. Comrades who were detained in hospital needed to get information to their families, and their families needed to communicate with them while they were in hospital under police guard. That is the conversation as a child I overheard many times. My mother would inform one comrade or another that “Meester Reggie is gevang”.
body.copy...: After 1994, when people of colour could move to town, my uncle was the first in the family to buy a house in town, I remember the fights at the park. White children would tell us “Julle h****ts hoort nie hier nie”. Now 28 years later, we still have to fight.
Wyngaard, individuals like you are deliberately misleading a community who suffers. Kriel and Ernst Roets are only happy to help people of colour who are hungry and greedy enough to abuse their platform to divert the conversation. The real conversation is the irreversible damage and how we undo that damage.
The masters you chose to serve are impatient and they want “their land”. People of colour are told we should forget the past and we should move on. How can we forget if we are still living in a modernised apartheid?
For years Wyngaard reported about South Africa’s political landscape and challenges. Is it really rocket science to figure out that the Western Cape under the apartheid government benefited from the best infrastructure where little to no development took place in other provinces? We can blame the democratic government for many things, we can be angry at the ANC for failing us in many ways, but if we must be honest, we should also acknowledge what they have done with absolutely nothing. The fact that Wyngaard mentioned that he will make use of AfriForum’s legal resources scares me, and it should scare anyone.
Wyngaard doesn’t have an activist vein, let alone a bone. Show me one fight he lead for the injustices against his community. He doesn’t know a day of the Struggle as an activist.
I have been in the field of education activism for a number of years and every year communities face overcrowded classrooms, unplaced learners, learners who don’t see one day in class for an academic year.We knock on doors to seek justice for these children. But Kriel’s will never be a door I will knock on.
You will abuse the desperation of our communities for housing, unemployment and relief from crime to take the national government to court every month, while leaving the lilly white Western Cape government to play with the budget allocated to serve the people, especially the poor.
I want Wyngaard to tell us as the community you claim to represent, when did AfriForum start caring for people of colour, while the Indigenous community fight for their rightful place and to get back their land that was stolen from them? The same Kriel you had coffee with went on an international campaign in 2018 to mobilise against the government’s proposed bill of the expropriation of land without compensation.
The crime you claim you want to fight began with drug abuse. The apartheid government introduced the Cape Flats to drugs. When have you become so blind that you don’t notice, how to this day, our people after working their whole lives on farms, as pensioners are chased like dogs from these farms in an undignified manner ?
The fight has always been for freedom, inclusivity, and the dignity of our people. Our suffering is not for sale. I won’t claim to speak on behalf of the coloured community. Many of us have no interest in being developed by apartheid’s stolen money. We want to share in the economy, we want to earn our bread in an honest way, but most of all, we are now more determined to fiercely address the inequalities. A conversation that the likes of your masters try at all cost to avoid. So when you sat around that table with Kriel, you were on your own.
When you sold out our community, many of us will tell you, “NOT IN OUR NAME.”
Le Roux is the founder of Parents for Equal Education South Africa, and writes in her personal capacity.