Rude graffiti on a wall in Orania had the conservative Afrikaner community in the Northern Cape in a rage recently, the Volksblad newspaper reported on Wednesday.
A resident who was apparently squatting on a plot spent the weekend in jail in Hopetown after he fired shots when residents gave him a tin of paint to cover the crude words.
He apparently refused to paint over the words ”Ek soek my fokken geld [I want my fucking money]”. Nobody knows who owes him the money, the report said.
The man appeared in the Hopetown Magistrate’s Court on Monday and was out on bail.
Andre Coetsee, owner of the Aan-die-Oewer caravan park, said the graffiti was on a corrugated-iron wall next to the road leading to the park.
He said a group of residents expressed their dissatisfaction with the graffiti last week Friday by giving the man a tin of paint and ordering him to cover the words before sunset. Things then got out of hand and shots were fired.
”Afrikaners do not squat and do not write graffiti in foul language,” he was quoted as saying in the report.
Coetsee said residents had put up with various graffiti written by the man for some time. He was apparently living illegally in a caravan with two corrugated-iron shacks attached.
The graffiti was painted over on Friday afternoon after the man was arrested by police.
Eleanor Lombard, spokesperson of the Orania Movement, said the community had shown ”much patience and tolerance” with the man over a long time.
”But, there comes a time when a community must take a stand to protect its values,” Lombard was quoted as saying in the report. — Sapa