Thursday 28 February 2013

"n Boertjies Thoughts: Boertjies is mos Dom


Boertjies is mos dom





"I would like to announce ... the new level of the minimum wage for 1 March 2013 to 28 February 2014 be pegged at R105 per day for employees who work nine hours a day or R11.66 per hour, R525 weekly or R2274.82 per month," 

It was a quiet morning on most farms, we were all doing business as usual when the phones started ringing, “Did you hear what the Minister Said?” “What are we going to do?” Like a mother standing over her Child’s limping body, we all stood on our farms shocked, outraged, disappointed. I slowly got on to my quad bike and drove off to one of the most farthest points of the farm, from my vantage point i looked out over the years of hard labour, the changes that happened and part of my life’s legacy. Is this the end? Do we have to move on and trek like our forefathers, is Mozambique the new frontier? I saw the workers on the tobacco field; I grew up in front of most of them. Some grew up with me. These are the people who helped build this farm. I have an obligation towards them. My feelings and emotions were at breaking point when the phone suddenly rang.

“We have a meeting tomorrow at 6 pm” It was the Chair Person of our Farming Community. “Please let everybody know about the meeting.” With that we rang of. The days passed with mix feelings. What can we expect will there be any answers? I will have to use a bit of deduction and I will need some skill to read the person’s body langue. With that we all set of for the meeting, lies were told, truths were hidden and hypocrisy were wide spread. Thinking back, more than 6 meetings just to get answers, we were none the richer and poorer than when we first heard the news.  Our final meeting were held in Groblersdal. We left early the morning to avoid most traffic in the capital city of Pretoria; there was an indescribable silence in the car as we drove through mountains and open valleys. Will this meeting hold the answers that we are seeking? Each one of us was trapped in our own thoughts. The meeting came and went with no answers.

On our way back I opened up my kindle to read a bit, I flipped through the books, The Devine Comedy by Dante, to heavy now, I searched the Bible to heavy now I thought. I closed my kindle thinking of a verse in Habakkuk, trying to correlate that with what Dante had written about in the 1300’s. Was their time so much different from ours, Habakkuk and the Israelites had to face the fearsome Challdiers, in Dante’s era it was the dark ages and the church used hypocrisy to rule. How much do we differ from then? the mountains and valley’s passed and my thoughts were running over the open fields.  In the end I decided that we shall comply with the law of the land. I have an obligation to my workers.

After all was said and done, I looked back over the past two weeks and realised how we would use another person’s suffering and make a profit out of it. In Afrikaans we have a saying “Die een se dood, is die Ander se brood.” Have we stooped so low, have we learned nothing from history, or do we just use history to make our fortune out of those who have no answers. In each meeting a person came forth and said they will help us with this and that, but at a price of course.  Wel dis die wet van Transvaal.

The final bell has rung we have entered a new era of wages, comply or not. As I sit here I’m thinking of a great singer Koos Kombuis he wrote a song about their domestic worker when she died.  Will our Kytie stay, she was always just there. Will there still be Mielie pap in the morning?

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