roams
Justin Pearce
The bakkie still rules in the Karoo. By 8am on election day, the Nissans and Isuzus of the Sutherland district begin bearing their cargo of voters to the polls – each with a white farmer at the wheel and coloured farm workers in the back.
They travel along long dirt roads where the occasional flattened jackal is the only evidence of passing traffic.
More philanthropic farmers have installed fibreglass canopies on their bakkies.
Where they haven’t, the voters huddle as the first rays of the sun gild the koppies and start to nudge the temperature above zero.
Poll officials from Sutherland also travel in a Japanese vehicle as they make their tour of the surrounding farms: in a minibus, with a cling-wrapped plate of sandwiches and a collapsible cardboard polling booth.
First stop is the voorkamer (living room) of the farm Rooi-uitspanning. A garden gnome looks on from the roof of a nearby outhouse as bulky farmers and fine-boned workers shuffle into a queue under the roof of the stoep.
One of the workers has dressed for the cold and for the occasion: his black woolly hat has the South African flag embroidered on the front. But he’s voting New National Party.
“We want things to carry on the way they are,” he explains. “Everything comes from the white people. I’ve never suffered hunger.”
Have things changed at all since the 1994 election?
He looks satisfied that there have been improvements. “Five years ago we didn’t know what was happening – now we’re looking to the future.”
He’s right. During the 1994 election, the typical reaction of Karoo farm workers to political questions went along the lines of, “Die Here alleen weet [God only knows].”
This time round, people are more assured, less reliant on divine intervention.
“Here we all vote for the National Party,” says a woman standing on the margins of the polling station, looking after her toddler while the rest of the family make their crosses.
The Nats’ “New” adjective hasn’t sunk in here.
Her views are echoed by most of her colleagues – though there are exceptions.
“I’ll vote for the Democratic Party – that’s the one which has the most to do with our religion,” says a middle-aged man, deep lines etched into his face.
But he admits he voted for the NP last time, and might vote African National Congress in future.
A friendly farmer has another way of putting it: “They [the workers] have no idea what the parties stand for. They are like lost children. The ANC is doing nothing for them.”
He adds: “This is a great day for them.”
“A big holiday,” his wife chimes in.
The farmer says that for him, the election is about “checks and balances” – he throws the English phrase into an otherwise Afrikaans conversation, and raises the spectre of the two-thirds majority.
As the people in the back of the bakkies sit tight in their support for the NNP, the drivers are abandoning the party which they voted into power decade after decade.
Some had already fled to the Freedom Front by 1994 – but now several of them speak of a new respect for the DP.
“I have problems with the NP’s past,” confesses a man in a patched zip-up sweater and Eugene de Kock-style spectacles.
A neighbouring boer complains that ANC- imposed minimum wages are forcing him to lay off workers.
“Hulle neuk ons met wette [they are assaulting us with laws],” he fumes.
A woman with a red Isuzu raises local concerns: the state of the roads (important when the the corner caf is 50km away) or the rumoured closure of the hospital in Sutherland, something which would necessitate a journey of more than 100km for medical care.
Listening to the stoeptalk, it’s hard not to detect a remarkable convergence of ideas between those who drive bakkies and those who sit in the back.
Land claims? A genial farmer explains why they don’t happen here, for reasons of elementary economics.
“It takes 10ha to support one ewe,” he says, pointing out that land claims need to be made by communities – and to support a whole community would need a lot of ewes and therefore more land than is currently going spare.
A farm worker glumly leaves the farmhouse and waits for the bakkie. He hasn’t voted – no one had made clear to him the need to register.
“I wanted to vote for the white people – the black people don’t know what to do,” he says.
I ask him if he can foresee a time when the bruinmense (brown people, his term) have farms and drive bakkies
“Yes, it can happen,” he says – but doesn’t propose when or how.